We spent our Christmas in Utah in 2018. We drove to Utah the day the kids got out of school and stayed in a hotel in Moab, UT. We finished the drive Saturday morning and made it to Grandma's house by lunch. There was snow at Grandma's house so the kids were super excited to start playing in it right away. Taryn, Lucy, and Anson had fun searching for icicles in the back yard. In this first picture you can see the biggest one they found that Taryn is holding. Taryn was super amazed at all the icicles because she had never seen them that big before. Lucy and Taryn loved being Tyler's shoulder angels this trip. They asked for shoulder rides all weekend. I tried telling them one is supposed to be the angel giving good advice and one is supposed to be the devil giving bad advice, but both girls wanted to be angels. Hence, two shoulder angels for Tyler. It was pretty cute.
Before heading to church, we grabbed a couple pictures. Here's one with Grandma and all the grandkids. Tara just had a baby so they didn't make it out, but there were still plenty of grandkids to go around.
After church, we took our big group pictures while we were still all dressed up. Here's the grandkids with both Grandma and Grandpa.
We did our usual talent show and each child performed something. Taryn did some cup stacking. Aubrey did her gymnastics moves, and Tessa played the piano. Abby sang with her cousins and also sang Glorious with her sisters. I wished we had more room in the van and we could've brought Abby's horn or Tessa's drums. They could have had a lot more talent options if their talent equipment weren't so large. Oh well. It was still a great talent show.
The teenage grandkids put together the nativity. They read the story from the Bible while the rest of the kids acted out the parts. The scenery and costumes were all found and created by the girls as well. It was a great production and we as parents love that we just get to enjoy the final show instead of having to be in charge of putting it together. Thank goodness for creative teenage girls!
We did get a few games in while we were together, which is our favorite part. I grabbed a picture of the adults while playing games in our Christmas jammies.
Seeing Dutchess the horse was also high on my girls' list of going to Grandma's house. She's definitely bigger than when we brought her out there a year ago. It was fun seeing her and how much she's grown.
The three "littles" loved helping Grandpa feed Dutchess. She was even nice enough to let them pet her when she got close enough to the fence.
The older girls stayed cooped up in their basement room all weekend. I finally headed down there to get my own picture of them since we hardly ever saw them. They loved just talking, playing games on their phones, and making up dances and movies while they were together.
I took this picture of the "in-betweens" right before the pinata party. These kids were good about hanging out together. They're the not quite teenagers, but too old to play with the "littles".
Here are some group shots before and after the pinata hitting. The kids were really getting into cheering for each other as they each took a turn hitting the pinata. We always start youngest to oldest, but the pinata is wrapped good enough that everyone gets at least three turns to hit it. They even started blindfolded this time for the first two hits, but then we went another round without the blindfold before they busted it open. It's such a fun tradition.
Here are the matching pajamas that everyone got this year thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Gibbons. We love getting our Christmas pajamas and being able to open them Christmas Eve.
Here's a final picture of everyone on that Sunday before Christmas. I love how even though we see each other maybe twice a year, it doesn't take long for our kids to get right back into the swing of being best friends again. We love our family and loved being able to spend Christmas together.
Merry Christmas from the Gibbons!
2018
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