A Christmas Surprise

We love having Christmas at home, yet we also love spending it with family. This year we got the best of both worlds! Our original plan was to spend Christmas at home, then drive down to Arizona on December 26 and spend the week there. Soon after Thanksgiving, Ryan got the idea to surprise his family by driving down early to be there sometime on Christmas day. We shared the idea with his brother, Brett, who lives here in UT, and they were excited to join in on the surprise. After a long sequence of events and a few stressful moments, the plans were arranged and we decided to drive halfway on Christmas Eve and the rest the next morning so we could arrive at Grandma-ma's (Ryan's grandma) house for the big Christmas Day lunch and festivities.

The boys were SO excited when we told them with about a week's notice that Santa would be coming early. They got even more excited as we were loading up the car when they learned that Dad could hook the Wii up in the van -- they got to play it on the drive! We left our house about 1:30 and so we were able to make it all the way to Flagstaff for the night. It was nice to only have a little more than a 2-hour drive on Christmas morning.

We made it to Grandma-ma's and Grandpa-pa's about 30 minutes before all the family was to show up. They knew we were coming early, as did Ryan's mom, but his 3 siblings who live in AZ and their families and Ryan's dad had no idea. Everyone showed up in stages, so we had fun standing at the door and yelling surprise each time one of the families came in.

The surprise was mostly for Ryan's dad. It was fun to see his reaction. We stood in the entryway and yelled surprise, joined by some of Chris' family who lives there in Mesa. So his face at first looked at us as if "Surprise" was a funny thing to say . . . no big deal that the family was there. Then after a few seconds you could tell that he had registered that all the Utah family was there a day and a half early and his face turned to happy surprise :)
Between Grandma-ma's house and then later that day at Ryan's parents' house, we had a great Christmas Day! The best present was being together as a family, and Santa was also very good to us!

The whole group together

Mrs. Claus, a.k.a. Grandma

Mr. Claus, a.k.a Grandpa
Getting ready to open presents

"1, 2, 3 . . . open!"
Night at the Museum shirts Grandpa got at the Smithsonian. Notice the cute 2 girl cousins -- with Elizabeth, there are only 3 girls and 10 boys in this group!

Adam and Noah enjoying their presents. They are about 2.5 weeks apart from each other and 5 months older than Elizabeth.
waiting patiently
Brett and Hyrum

Enjoying the presents from the cousins Joshua loved his new Cars hat and mittens so much that he wore the hat around before we cut the mittens off! Benjamin got a great drawing pad and markers, and Nathan was SO excited about his Bakugan display case. Notice that they are wearing the new slippers they insisted bringing from UT!

What a wonderful Christmas Day! As we celebrate the birth of our Savior, who has made eternal families possible, there is no greater gift than spending time with our family!