Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas! It's nice once all the crazy preparation is finished and we can just enjoy a relaxing day with our family.

Christmas Eve

We skipped a lot of our Christmas Eve traditions this year. We just had a relaxing day visiting with friends, watching Christmas movies, and having a nice dinner.

Bailey made her first pie crust!

Chase brought over this awesome Batman blanket for Bailey!

Texas presents from Elder Varvel! 

Bailey loved her shirt from Sawyer! 

A Texas blanket for me!

 Christmas 

Christmas was great! Bailey got up at 4:30 in the morning! I thought teenagers were supposed to sleep in! Mark wouldn't let her come in and get us till 6:00, so she just hung out in her room counting down the minutes. Crazy kid! After we opened presents, we just hung out watching new movies, playing with stuff Bailey got, and doing a puzzle while we waited for Sawyer to call.

Santa came!

Stocking!

She loves Puzzles! One of these was already finished the day after Christmas!

Batman jammies!

Bailey wants to go skydiving for her 18th birthday. So, just as a practice round, we got her a Utah adventure that consists of indoor skydiving, indoor surfing, and indoor rock climbing. She's pretty excited!

A few presents for Elder Varvel. I have to keep him current on all the books and movies he's missing.

Eleven pounds of Nutella should last her awhile! 

Nice photo bomb by Mark!

 The best part of our day was skyping with Elder Varvel! We got to talk to him for about 2 hours! He looked and sounded so great! He definitely still has his same crazy sense of humor. He had us laughing most of the time. He loves his mission, and is having so many great experiences! 5 1/2 months and he'll be home!

I miss this face so much!

Bailey and Elder Varvel! She misses him a lot! It's crazy how much these two act alike. She was teasing him by telling him that when he gets back they can go on double dates, and that she'll be able to drive him around. He doesn't like either of those things!

Savannah with her favorite missionary! :)

He was being so funny when we were taking pictures. For this one he took off his glasses and gave us his best smolder.

One puzzle done!

Rocky the Snowman

We had a white Christmas! It snowed a lot on Christmas Eve. Mark had to spend some time clearing the driveway on Christmas night, so me and Bailey decided to go out and make a snowman. He turned out so cute! We named him Rocky.

A white Christmas!

We couldn't make snowballs and stack them on top of each other, because the snow was too powdery. So, we just mounded him up as best we could. 

He's pretty cute! 

His eyes and mouth were M&Ms, his nose was a pickle, and his buttons were rolos.  

We were freezing!

She was so proud of her little friend!

We're grateful for the Christmas season we've had. Grateful that we could spend lots of time together as a family. We're especially grateful for the reason we celebrate....the birth of our Savior. His birth, life on earth, atonement, death, and resurrection make it possible for me to live for eternity with my family. There is no greater gift than that.