Christmas 2011-Reader's Digest Edition

Ah, Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year. (For who, I am sure I don't know.) Traditionally, I pull out my camera and take some photos. Not sure why I forgot that particular tradition this year, but I did. Right from the get go. Our first Christmas-like activity was decorating sugar cookies with the Johnsons. We love this tradition. One that gets easier and cleaner the older our kiddos get. I made some sad-and-sorry-straight-from-the-Pilsbury-tube-cookies this year. I just couldn't bring myself to make the yummy thick sugar cookies I normally do, knowing I would not be eating a single one. I figured the kids wouldn't mind. I was right, they didn't. However, I did not account for Bill's friend, Alan, who was so worried he might have to eat a "vegan" sugar cookie he baked a huge batch of his own. He even brought his own frosting. Granted, the sad-and-sorry cookies were no match for the perfect-from-scratch goodies Alan showed up with. Lucky for Alan, I am used to being shown up in the kitchen department and never take "food-mishaps" personally. Plus, this tradition has very little to do with cookies and everything to do with seeing our friends and their munchkins.
From friends to family, our next Christmas activity involved inviting all of Bill's family over for a brisk walk down the hill to enjoy the lights at Temple Square. We picked a cold, crowded night, but everyone (and their phalanges) survived. Even super-trooper 9th months pregnant April, who walked both ways (slowly) without a peep of complaint. Hot cocoa and ginger cookies were everyone's reward for surviving the 20 degree weather. Good conversation and laughs about growing up "Barber" kept the evening light-hearted.


April hosted the family Christmas Eve dinner. (Did I mention she is VERY pregnant with her 5th child? This will be the 5th with every other child 7 or under!) With a family full of strict and strange diets of vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, and kosher- no one wanted to tackle preparing a meal for a bunch of picky-poo eaters. Hence the "bring your favorite dish" theme of the evening (which turned into, bring what you and your family can eat). Anne and I killed the time making silly pictures of ourselves. Well, silly pictures of Anne anyway.

After eating all the vegan chili we could handle, we drove to Salt Lake where we participated in another Romney-Barber tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve. Without a trace of creativity, it is always PJ's. But before they could adorn our young sons, we decided this year to revive an old Romney family tradition- a late night Christmas Eve movie. This year's choice. The Adventures of Tin-Tin. (It was a major hit with my boys, for the record.)

Exhausted, we all crawled into bed around 2 am with parental instructions not to wake us up before 8:30. Being the fabulous listeners our boys are, they slept in until 9:30, making me think we should make that late night movie an annual thing from here on out! Once conscious to the world, we started our morning opening our stockings and working our way from there.

The boys are growing up. No where has that been more apparent than when it came time to make their Christmas wish lists. Cash and Legos. End of list. Really. That was all they could come up with. So that is just what we did. We opened new savings accounts for them that come with their own debit/cash cards. They are now the proud/responsible managers of their own money. A gift for all of us, as no longer will Bill need to be the keeper of their money. Their allowance is set up to automatically be deposited into their own accounts. They get to manage how much they have online. I think we are all singing the "hallelujah chorus" about this new family development.

The second part of their wish list-Legos. We made sure they had sufficient to play with Christmas morning. William also was able to download a game with a Nintendo gift card. Debit cards are cool and all, but not so much fun to hang out with in your pajamas on Christmas morning with. Bill's childhood fantasy was fulfilled this year with a gift certificate to go hang gliding or paragliding (his call) and Bill brought me closer to my dreams by grabbing me a stack of school supplies and a very cool tape deck shaped purse (in case the other students couldn't tell how much older than them I really am.)

After we celebrated by ourselves opening our gifts, we headed up to Amy's house for family presents and Christmas dinner. This is where the old adage of "the best laid plans" came to fruition. April decided as we were in the middle of opening presents to go into "false" labor. The trick is, at the time, no one knew it was false, because it was looking pretty "real" with her contractions lasting for a minute and being only just over a minute apart. If that is really what was happening for her for the length of time she was saying it had been going on that kid should have been born in Amy's living room. She was rushed off to the hospital for several hours, along with her parents and the most medically inclined of all the Barbers, Anne (in case she had to deliver the baby in the van- bwhahaha. Maybe next time, Anne.) That left our family, Dave and Amy and her kids to enjoy the half cooked turkey dinner. The turkey had been put into the oven frozen and cooked for 6 hours to no avail. This combined with the blocked kitchen sink that Bill worked on for several hours and you have all the makings of a comedy of errors type Christmas night. With April in the hospital, Amy's house was full of 4 little kiddos with no parents to take them home. We took pity on Amy's boys who would be displaced from their beds that night and decided to have a cousin sleep over with Sam and David Ray at our house. Video game madness ensued and cousin fun was had by all. Christmas wrapped up with a girl's shopping trip with all the Barber women, Bill and Anne having a ski day at Brighton, and Anne and I having a fun girl's night out at the Tavernacle requesting songs and enjoying each other's company. As soon as our last Barber relative left us with a quiet and kind of empty-feeling home, our Tyrrell friends stopped in for a visit. It took the edge of the whole "empty house" syndrome.

New Year's Eve finds us at home together watching movies and playing games. Some unknown neighbors kindly invested at least $1,000 dollars on illegal fireworks and are currently treating us to a magnificent display right out our front window. Thank you unknown neighbors. Thank you unknown photo takers for supplying photos from the internet for this blog. And many thanks to our family and friends who made this a memorable and delightful Christmas season.