Spoke too Soon

So I was stressed out about speaking in church last Sunday, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

While Andrew was at the BYU bowl game Saturday night, we got a call from David saying that Andrew's dad had suffered a stroke and was in a Reno hospital (Andrew' s parents had flown to Reno on Friday to attend a nephew's funeral.) After talking with his brothers and mom, Andrew decided it was very necessary for him to take the first morning flight on Sunday to be with his parents. So he called a member of the bishopric about 10 o'clock Saturday night and told them the situation and they completely understood. Andrew took the 8am flight with his oldest brother Mark and nephew Stephen. I stayed by the phone all day Sunday and Andrew called me every few hours with updates.....the kids and I were really concerned about grandpa.

To make a long story short, the doctors performed surgery to stop the bleeding in his brain and get rid of a blood clot that had formed behind his eye. He spent a few days in ICU and we were told last night that Dad was released from the hospital yesterday and they were flying home this morning....I'm sure they're already home by now. We're not sure what the long term affects will be for Dad, but we're just glad his life was spared and that he's now home safe. It was sad not to have them here to celebrate Christmas with us, but we're glad everything is okay.

On a happier note, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve we got together with the Dixon family for the traditional soup dinner and acting out the nativity and singing christmas carols. There was even a visit from the big guy in a red suit!!

In a few short hours on Christmas morning, our house looked like a bomb had gone off. Our floors were covered in wads of wrapping paper, boxes, and all the opened toys. We are still recovering. (I bet the garbage men hate the garbage pick up days after Christmas where every house has piles and piles of garbage in front of their houses!!) This was the first year we spent the entire Christmas day alone as a family and we thoroughly enjoyed staying in our jammies all day and watching christmas movies and playing with all the new toys. Tanner slept thru most of his first Christmas--I think he still has presents yet to open!!

I took tons of pictures that I wanted to share, however while playing around with my new camera lens I got for Christmas (hooray!) I accidentally pushed the format CF card button and erased all my images. So I'm bummed I no longer have pictures of the kids acting out the nativity, of Mason and Tanner sitting on Santa's lap or of the kids first reactions on Christmas morning. Luckily we do have some video though.

I do want to publicly thank Santa Claus for bringing Taylor and Zachary each a Nintendo DS for Christmas----they've never been this quiet! However, all of Mason's toys make WAY too much noise!!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas--we'd love to hear about it!!