Favorite Things 2024

Jeff gave me the most beautiful floral arrangement!  He specially ordered it from Orem Floral, complete with a lighted Christmas carolers village piece. It stayed good for a really long time. I just love it!

I love this Christmas village.  I always want to shrink down and walk through it!  I added a couple new pieces this year: we picked up Santa, his sleigh and flying reindeer at a Christmas market in Germany.  I also added Ace's Toy Town and the Elf Lodge.

This cute little car that I picked up in Vienna, Austria, that is full of wrapped chocolates.  I literally bought it as a decoration.  I thought it was so cute and had to bring it home with me.  There was the cutest little store that had all kinds of darling tin cans in different shapes, all full of chocolate.  I loved all of them, but especially this car.

This cake stand and salt shaker set that Caden and Halle gave me for Christmas this year.  How CUTE!

Last year, I took Jace to see Santa and his reindeer at Shasta's house.  She had this metal print made for me as my Christmas gift last year.  I love it!

I love my travel tree. It's a walk down memory lane each chair as a pull out the ornaments. Here are not all but some new ones from this year.

We went to California, Italy, Amsterdam, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Missouri, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Texas.

I love this new Santa on my main family room tree.  We just bought him this month in Germany.  Jeff fell in love with him and bought him immediately.

I've always loved these white carolers that my grandma Hartvigsen painted.  My mom has been the owner of them for as long as I can remember.  I always told her that I spoke them when she was gone.  So I both love and hate that I have them.  I love them because I've always loved them, but I kind of hate them because it means my mom is gone.

I've had this house for several years, but finally added the light to it this year and I LOVE it!

I love my kitchen tree and the gingerbread theme. I especially love this gingerbread house that I've had for years, but it's my favorite! And I love the new pink sprinkled balls that I added this year.

 

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas 2024. Cade spent the night with Halle's family. Jens and Alexandra came up late because Jace slept in. Jack and Sid had opened all of their gifts from each other the night before. So we let Molly just open her gifts up one after the next. Then when all the kids got home, we gave them our gifts from us. We gave a trip to Disneyland as the main gift.  We FaceTime called grandma Julie to be in on the gift because we want to take her too.  Each of the kids read a letter that we wrapped in a card, with $200 worth of $2 bills for churros and other treats.  Grandma Julie read the last card to find out where they were all going.  She cried, Jeff and I teared up and the kids were all smiles!  Then Jeff gave the boys a surprise trip to the Alamo Bowl game to watch BYU play.  They each opened up BYU sweatshirts as a pre-cursor.   They were so excited to find out that they were flying out early the next morning!

Jeff surprised me with a big present all wrapped beautifully with a sweatshirt inside that said ATHENS and a card with it that said we were going on a cruise to Athens, Greece June 14th!

Then for breakfast, I made Kneaders French toast, biscuits and gravy casserole, grandma Julie's breakfast casserole, bacon, chocolate milk and apple juice.

It was different without my mom here.  It's only the 2nd Christmas in my entire 48 years of life without her.  But I'm sure she was sending her love.