December Catch-up/Christmas Stuff

So December has been a crazy and somewhat busy month. We had MANY Christmas' to celebrate with family this year. Let's recap what we can (something are going to be represented by pictures):

First Christmas:

We did the annual Cameron Christmas Party. Larry's Mom's side does a party usually the weekend before Christmas where we eat, play bingo for our gifts, and visit with the family (usually followed with pictures). It's a tradition I've come to really look forward to. I've rarely seen his mom's side of the family and it seems every year there's a new cousin to be introduced to. Lets also say that I proved to Larry how great I am when it comes to my sixth sense of knowing when people are pregnant or about to be engaged (I'm SO good at guessing it they were only like 3 months along and I knew).

Christmas #2 and 3:

Christmas 2 and 3 brought a TON of driving for us! We had plans to go to Shawn and Amber's to visit with them (along with Colby, his girlfriend Ashley and, of course, baby Will-who I just can't get enough of!) and do an early dinner (a VERY yummy baked potato bar!) and then after spending a couple hours there we would go to my Grandma's and do our Christmas with Cindy and her family. However halfway to T-Ville I realized we left my purse back in Heber (quite the drive back), but figured I'd pick it up another day because it was dark and VERY snowy. After we got to Grandma's we figured out our house keys were in the purse and so we HAD to go back. So we spent like 2 hours at Shawn & Amber's, 30 minutes at Grandma's and about 3 or 4 hours just driving, it was scary. But it was so fun to see Baby Will's reaction to his gift (the pic above Amber sent me, so cute!) and I was pretty excited to give my Grandma's gift to her so it made it pretty much worth it (her gift coming later).

Christmas 4:
There aren't really any pics for this one, but it was actually ON Christmas day. Larry and I drove up to his Mom's new house in Syracuse to see it for the first time. It is SO cute! They did good on house hunting. She showed us around and we reminisced for a little and then she fed us a yummy breakfast casserole (that, I won't lie, I thought I would really hate, but it was really good) and we reminisced some more (I got to see a report card of Larry's that definitely wasn't his norm that's for sure). Once back home, we opened our gifts and then got on Skype to chat with Mom, Will, Grandma, Cindy and other family members about what we got and what we've done and what we'll be doing for the rest of the day. It was so nice seeing everyone (even if it was on a computer).

Christmas 5 (yes there were really this many):

This one was this past weekend with the Wilson's. They came down to move Ariel and her new hubby (so weird!) back to Idaho for college and so we got to visit with them yesterday. It was a fun day of catching up, telling stories, and playing games (we've become big board gamers!). I've never played Taboo before and I have to say it was one of the more fun games I've played. Girls beat the pants off the boys! Then I went over to my Grandma Wilson's to play Apples to Apples (and a card game called Golf) with them. It's always SO much fun playing games over there because we always laugh so hard. This time we got someone to spray water out of their nose! Seriously! Haha

Other things to note this month:

Larry got the rest of his wisdom teeth out this past Saturday (they pulled two a couple months ago and then decided to pull the other two before the end of the year) so he's been taking things easy. It took 1 1/2 hours to get just ONE tooth out and they rubbed the side of his mouth so raw it literally looks like a layer of skin came off. It's so red and swollen, I felt so bad. Last time I didn't go back with him and I decided to this time and it was one of the hardest things to watch. Luckily he chose to watch Tangled so when it got real bad I would just watch with him. There were numerous times I wanted to push the dentist away and say "never mind, we're good, he'll grow into them!"

The 18th was my birthday...that's all there is to know about that day. I got a nice treat at work and Larry took me out to dinner (Yummy Texas Roadhouse!!!) so that was that.

I got to hang out with my brother, Andy, on the 24th which was fun. We went to lunch at Zupas, walked Valley Fair Mall (not for any real reason as you can't actually buy anything worth anything at that mall), and then went to see Anchorman 2 (I'd pass on it if I were you).

We also got this awesome desk and file cabinet for Larry's new Work Station for when he works from home. It's AMAZING!!

And we've become obsessed with playing our new Firefly Game. If you've seen the show, it's amazing. If you haven't, it's SUPER confusing. We LOVE LOVE it!

And now onto my awesome gift ideas I did this year (I was REALLY proud of my gift giving this year, aside from a couple people I felt I could've done better on, I'll make it up next year though):

For my Grandma:

My Grandma has gone on and on this year about how she doesn't "need" anything so to not get her a gift. It's really hard to get something for someone who has everything she wants or needs or has the means to get it and will. But I happened to stumble upon this on Pinterest and decided to replicate it with the grandkid's names. I was going to use extra tiles to put Grandkids along the bottom, but after designing a bunch of different ways to place the names (I believe there are 15 now!) I found a cute way to put Grandkids in the center and decided to highlight a little so it stood out. Many steps later here's the final result:

I will say she seemed to love it AND I heard a couple comments of "we should make something like that for our family." I think I did good on hers.

For some Family Gift ideas (for my dad's side and Cindy's family):

 

I decided to have some fun with these. I've come to believe that nothing brings a family closer than having a Game Night. Larry and I try and do them as often as possible, but it's harder with only two people. I found some age appropriate games for each family (so that ALL members could play at least one) and included some fun toys and candy. I got REALLY crafty this year (much more so when compared to my norm) and had some fun making tags and coming up with a fun little poem and everything. I can't believe I didn't lose my mind a little bit, I actually had a lot of fun and am looking forward to doing more things for around the house.

 

Overall Christmas was...much different than I'm used to, but we definitely made the most of it. I'm still of the mind that it is SO much more fun to give gifts than to receive them. Don't get me wrong, who doesn't love getting gifts, but I SO look forward to seeing people open their gifts when I'm that proud of them :)

I even got the first 3 birthday of the year out of the way so go me! Haha. Hope everyone else had a great Christmas, only 2 more days (well really 1.2 this late in the day) till 2014!! I'm going to try and post my "year end review" post tomorrow, but Larry got me a nice present and we're going to go see comedian Christopher Titus at Wise Guys (woot woot a real adult New Years Eve!).