Family Talent Show and Maximum Bonding

 Someone (not me) had the idea to have a family talent show.  My big brother and his son Alex played a really cool duet on the piano.

I of course fretted for days and at the last minute had us do a quick version of "When Santa Comes to Mexico"  which is one of my favorite silly Christmas songs.  It was cute because we pointed to Tayevion as being "Pablo" (you know, the reindeer that helps Santa out in Mexico).  Jonas had to work that night so he wasn't there.

Here's my other brother with is family singing a cute song, I can't remember the name though.

Even little Jasmine did a song on the piano.  It was sooo cute!  Since she has never taken lessons, she just played a little tune she came up with. It was like 3 keys played over and over from one end of the piano to the other.  She was so concentrated too.  The rest of us were listening to her, but trying not to laugh because Taye was dancing in front of the piano.  It was so funny.

Here's Sidney and Kailee, they did a song.  My other niece Carina also played but I didn't get a good picture.

Then we forced, literally forced, my parents to come up and share a story from their childhood.  I don't know why they were so reluctant, well mostly my dad was.  In the end, he shared a story about the first Christmas present he received.  He was 12 when he got it!  He told us about how special he felt.  It was like a little matchbox car, I think a jeep.  It was cool for the kids to put all that they have into perspective.  I wish we could have recorded the stories that they shared, especially because I am trying to remember what my mom told us and I can't!  Good thing I have this blog, or I would forget my own family history!

Okay, after my mom and dad were done, it was my turn to take the lead.  I had asked for some time to do a "mystery bonding activity".  Ever since I missed the opportunity to do this at our last family reunion three years ago, I have wanted to do this the next time we were all together.  I was kind of embarrassed but I got up the nerve to initiate it anyway.  I don't know why but I started crying even as I was explaining it to them.  It's an activity that I did in my first year of college with my FHE group.  And it made a profound impression on me, all these years.  It's easy, all you do it sit in a circle with one person taking turns sitting in the middle and everyone in the circle tells that person one thing they love about them.  Or a memory with them, or anything nice about them.  I knew that some people would not be too excited about doing this, that it might sound boring but I felt really strongly that it would be a good experience.

Boy was I surprised by some of the reactions as we got going.  Especially the kids.  I thought for sure some of the kids would be giving generic answers just to pass on to the next person.  But no, they really thought about what they wanted to say and several of them cried every time thinking about that person!  It is really an amazing thing, when you are looking at that person that you love and thinking of all of the things that you love about them, the spirit was sooo incredibly strong that night!  And pretty much everyone was crying.  It was so great to hear kids say to parents and vice-versa, things that they might not ordinarily say.

It was such a bonding experience.  The only problem was that it took a REALLY long time.  There are like 24 of us!  In fact, we only got through half of the circle.  But that is okay because somehow I think that the people who got to have a turn were the ones that really needed to hear what was said about them.  And it is an experience for the person sharing as well as the person hearing anyway.  I felt bad because we were supposed to go to temple square that night and we didn't get to because this took so long, but I was still so glad we did it.  Several people expressed to me how glad they were that we got to do this, so that made me happy.

Christmas Day at Night

My brother and his family got a time share in Park City for week between Christmas and New Years.  So we headed up there on Christmas Day after all the daytime festivities were over.

Here is Jasmine with her favorite present:  her Pillow Pet!

And the boys.  They love each other so much, seriously inseperable.

Here is the loooooong table for dinner!   The condominiums let us use this conference room so we could all eat more comfortably.  It was crazy, there were so many of us!

Afterwards we had a white elephant gift exchange.

And then Derick took some pictures of some people.  Here's a random one of the two oldest cousins, Kailee and Alex.

Here's a cute one of Julio and his kids.

And the Browns, what a nice looking family.

And me and my rubber chicken. I know what you are thinking, but let me explain.

Okay so I got this rubber chicken from a good friend at my surprise 31st birthday party.  And I really like it.  But I was thinking that maybe it was time to pass it along in the white elephant exhange.  So I wrapped it all up but had anxiety the whole time and ended up trading my gift to get it back! 

And that's when I knew it was true love.

Christmas Day Part 1

This Christmas Day was so different from any other year!  We made all the kids wait downstairs where they all slept until we were ready.  It was torture, but hey, it's a part of a parent's job, haha.  This is the Santa loot before it got raided:

Pure joy!

 Tayevion with his train car and flashlight.

Jasmine and the Repunzul dress!

So after seeing what Santa brought, we had an intermission to have breakfast.  This is not something we normally do.  With our small family, we usually jump from Santa gifts to the rest.  But we soon found out why it is best to wait when you have this many people!  If we hadn't done it this way, we wouldn't have eaten breakfast until lunchtime!

Here are the kids playing Wii and the grownups making breakfast.  We had egg burritos and fresh fruit.

And then the opening resumes!

 It was funny to see Taye get so excited about his little dinosaurs I found at the thrift store!  I think it was his favorite present.

And then Taye decided to help his cousin open her presents!

My two cute nieces got the same book, so much fun!!

Christmas Eve Part Two

At the end of the trip (well it felt like I was on vacation too), we all put our pictures from the entire holiday and put them on one computer so we could share them.  This was so nice, so that if we didn't have our camera for a certain occasion, we could still have those pictures.  Anyway...I was browsing those pictures and found these other ones from Christmas Eve and couldn't resist posting them.  I was still using my old camara at this time because I got a new one on Christmas Day (yay!!) and these are all much better quality pictures.

I love Taye peeking out from behind on this one below.

My niece Kailee made these matching flower clips for all of the girls to wear on Christmas Eve!  It was such a nice gesture, and we all got to match.  This is my sister in law Cat and my two cute nieces.

And the kids also did this fun dance as part of the program.  It was awesome because ALL of the cousins participated, and this is where everyone first got a glimpse of Tayevion's dance moves. 

He loved the attention!

It was so fun to see my 18 year old nephew Alex participating in the dancing.  He is was not too cool to join in.  Love that!

And here's a couple of overhead views of the crazy opening of presents!

How can I express how wonderful it was to have everyone together? I can't, it was just beyond happiness.

Here's Jonas, up to his sillyness as usual--he reminds me of my dad how he lets us take pictures of him posing in funny ways.  I think he is doing the "wrapping paper recycle" dance here.



Sibling Bonding and other Christmas Eve Events

All of my siblings were here for Christmas!!!  And the siblings in laws and the cousins all together for the Holidays for the first time in a LONG time.  The only person who was missing was one sister in law due to divorce, and that was very sad.  We missed you R! 

Well, of course I was pretty proud of myself for initiating some sibling bonding.   So on Christmas Eve my sister and two brothers and I went out to have a bite and bond.  It was funny because in the middle of eating I announced "okay so the reason I called this meeting...".  Everyone looked up at me like "I knew it!" but then I said "just kidding!".  So we talked.  And we laughed.  And we got closer.  And we realized that we couldn't even remember the last time the four of us were out together.  So nice.  And I can't believe that in all of the days that we were together, we never once took a picture of only the four of us together.  Unless someone else got one but we all shared pictures so I don't think so.

Okay wait here is one picture that we took while we were out.  It's of my brother Derick since we sat next to each other.  The enders, because he's the oldest and I'm the youngest. (we even have a dance)

Every year the kids do a nativity.  It was especially fantastic this year because all the cousins were together.

Next came eating Guatemalan Paches but somehow I don't have any pictures of that either.  That's another big tradition of ours.  Then we got started with the madness, er--I mean opening presents.

This year Shayden made "God's Eye's" for each of the cousins.  He learned how to make them in Spanish class.  And Jasmine made picture frames, but they are not pictured.

Every year we celebrate Christmas Eve at my sisters home and then we go home late at night to wait for Santa.  But this year was different.  This year every single other cousin was going to be waking up together on Christmas morning.  So how could we deny our kids that super important pleasure?  So we decided to spend the night and wake up there on Christmas morning!  Jasmine wanted Jonas to go on the roof and leave a note for Santa that said "Closed.  Please go to cousins."  Haha!   Stay tuned for Christmas Day.