Christmas 2016

Christmas this year was definitely different from any other Christmas we've ever experienced before.  It was still great -- but different.  

For starters Jens was not here.  This was our first Christmas without him and NOT as a complete family in 18 years.  So right out of the shoot it was strange.  EVERY SINGLE YEAR, year after year, Jens has woke up in the middle of the night, at like 3:00am, and went into the other kids bedrooms to wake them up too.  They all creep out and look at the presents for 15 minutes or so and then they go back to bed and don't get up again until morning!  

Secondly, Christmas this year fell on a Sunday.  We've had this happen before, but our church was later the last time it was on Sunday.  This year we had church at 9:00am.  My kids don't ever even wake up on Christmas until around 8 or 8:30 am.  And thats exactly what they did this year too.  They woke up at 8:00, got ready for church, and then went through their stockings.  We had sacrament meeting only for one hour and then we came home.  The kids stripped out of their church clothes and put their pj's back on to open presents!

After the kids had opened up their gifts, we ate breakfast, then dad, grandma and I got everything ready and set up for when Jens would be calling home.  I was so looking forward to his phone call.  I had so much to ask about but unfortunately when he called, we were still trying like mad to get our TV in synch with the computer and facetime so that we could all see him easily.  Scott and Brooke Brumfield were up here helping us and it was just a fiasco.  We only had 40 minutes to talk.  I was super peeved about that.  I thought we would at least have an hour.  The tv / facetime thing was frustrating.  It kept delaying on his end and freezing.  He was having a hard time seeing our faces and we were just wasting time.  We ended up just talking to him on Jeff's stupid phone.  AND THE WORST PART was that he and his companion were at a church - in a class room - both sitting in the same room together.  We had ZERO privacy.  His companion was sitting there trying to listen to every single word we said, but he just couldn't help but hear EVERY SINGLE WORD we said.  Needless to say, all my questions that I was going to ask just went out the door because some of them were about his comp.  It was awkward and there were periods of silence.  I just hated the whole thing.  Turns out that that 40 minutes seemed like forever and I couldn't wait to hang up.  It was a total let down. I felt deflated, sad and depressed. I swear that come Mothers Day when he calls again, he damn well better be in a private room where I can talk to my son openly and honestly without others listening in.  After we hung up, grandma , dad and I opened up our gifts -- at this point it was like 3:00pm.  So different!  Still a nice day, but definitely different.

Molly was so excited with the karaoke singing machine that she got!

Sidney wanted several new lipsticks, clothes and jewelry.

Molly was also super excited that she got bedding for her American Girl doll bunkbeds.

Cade got a nice clothes -- he especially wanted some button down shirts "so he could look hot for the ladies"!  He's such a funny kid!

And he was estatic when he opened up his very own .22 rifle!  He also got an airsoft gun that he has wanted for forever.

I managed to get one picture of Jens on the TV before we disconnected it and just went to the phone.

Molly got me and her matching necklaces!  They were hearts that either said MOTHER or DAUGHTER on them.

Jens sent us a picture of his tree that I mailed him and another picture of his Christmas presents that we had mailed him, and others had sent him.

Jens with his companion Elder Redd from Logandale, NV.