Christmas 2018

This Christmas was one for the books! Our Christmas celebrations kicked off on Sunday. I played the piano in church and so we invited my parents and grandma to come to listen and then join us for dinner after. This ultimately ended up growing into Kristin, Dan, and Skylee also joining us for church and my entire family joining us for dinner. It was great. I performed "O Holy Night" with a vocal soloist. It was really pretty and I enjoyed playing it. For dinner, we had lasagna, salad, bread, and spiced apples with vanilla ice cream. It was all delicious! We enjoyed everyone's company.

Skylee didn't want to go home when her parents left, so we said she could sleep at our house. She was thrilled! Soon after everyone left, one of our neighbors brought over some mini s'mores. Skylee had so much fun roasting mini marshmallows and making videos about how to properly make s'mores. It was really fun. We then watched one of Eric's favorite Christmas movies, "The Nutcracker Prince." I had never seen it before and didn't care for it, so I fell asleep. After the movie, Eric put Skylee in bed.

Monday morning Skylee wanted to put a key out for Santa to come into our house since we don't have a chimney. We put a key outside and she was very happy to know Santa could get into our house. We made some breakfast and then gathered the presents and our items for the night and went to my parents for a baking extravaganza. I told my brother Bret that all I wanted for Christmas this year was to make gingerbread cookies because I'd never made them before. He was happy to oblige. Eric decided he wanted to make candy cane cookies while we were making our gingerbread cookies and it turned into a baking competition with Skylee being the judge.

We all made our cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill. While the dough was chilling, Bret and I made dough for orange rolls to enjoy on Christmas morning. I also made some dinner rolls for Christmas Eve dinner. After the gingerbread dough was chilled, we pulled it out and made our shapes, and baked the cookies. They were delicious! We then decorated the cookies - it was a lot of fun. Eric's candy cane cookies proved to be more challenging than anticipated. We learned we needed to add more flour than the recipe called for and they may have held their shape a little better. Ultimately, Skylee determined the gingerbread cookies won the contest on the grounds of both taste and appearance.

Bret and I then turned to the orange rolls and rolled the dough out very thin, added butter, marmalade, and brown sugar, and put the rolls in the oven. When we pulled them out they looked so delicious! We topped them off with an orange/powdered sugar glaze. and then waited until Tuesday morning to eat them.

The rest of the family arrived for dinner. My parents smoked prime rib and it was fantastic. Every Nielson family Christmas eve party of my entire childhood involved a prime rib, so it was fun to get back to tradition. Kristin made potato casserole, I made rolls, and we had a fruit salad and corn as well. It was a fantastic meal. We had pie and an assortment of Christmas goodies for dessert. After dinner, we played charades and then my grandpa performed a piano arrangement she put together for her ward on Sunday. It was amazing. My grandma is such a talented pianist. We ended the evening with a poem Kristin wrote, singing Christmas carols, and reading The Night Before Christmas.

Christmas morning we woke up and put on our matching pajamas and then headed to Kristin's house to open presents. Skylee was so excited when we got there to show us all of her Santa presents. He brought her a hatch-a-baby, a microphone/karaoke machine, and a doll. All of us took turns opening presents. Eric got me a bunch of Disney t-shirts for our trip to Tokyo Disney in May. My favorite shirt is the "Prince Eric Appreciation Club." He also got both tickets for us and my parents to see Hugh Jackman in July, and he got me a poster with the words to our wedding song. I'll probably buy some white picture frames at Ikea and put them in our bedroom.  He also got me a book about the creation of "Hamilton", which I haven't been able to put down.

I surprised Eric with some Yankees t-shirts and a Lego Architecture New York set. I also got him the new Lin-Manuel Miranda book. My parents got us a TV that we will put in our basement once it's finished (next month!) and new Yankees hoodies. It was a wonderful Christmas morning spent with family. Jake and Meg arrived in the early afternoon from Manti and we made aebleskivers, hash browns, and breakfast casserole for breakfast. It was delicious!

We then spent a few hours with Eric's family on Christmas afternoon. It was great to visit with his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We gave almost everyone in our family ancestry DNA kits for Christmas. We are excited to see their results come in! Christmas evening we went with my family to see the new Mary Poppins movie. It was fantastic - so whimsical and magical. We were captivated from the very beginning.

All-in-all, it was a wonderful Christmas spent with our family! What made this Christmas wonderful was that it was full of family and gave us many opportunities to remember the true meaning of Christmas – the birth, and ultimately the atonement, of the Savior Jesus Christ. We spend time with family at this time of year because through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can be together with our family for all eternity. In that Christmas and all the joy of being together given a little taste of what we hope heaven will be.