First year sharing Christmas with Palm Trees

Might as well start the new year off with a post, eh? Let's not notice that it's already February. That's still the New Year to me, folks! And, to make it even better, I am going to blog about Christmas 2011. How's that for New Year's blogging?

Rewind to Christmas 2010. Erica = had a newborn which happened to be the same timing as my Mom's 60th birthday (December 29), and well, let's just say I didn't really feel like venturing out a TON for the first 3 months of Tenley's life. (read: not at all, in fact I hibernated better than most bears do). So, my mom's 60th birthday ended up being kind of a flop because we all had these great plans to spend the New Year with her and then if you remember the crazy snowstorm of 2010, you will remember that everyone was snowed in.

So, in 2011 we took it into our own hands to make sure our Mom had the best redo "60th birthday" present ever. By August of 2011, we were making plans to get the entire family down to Arizona for Christmas and to surprise our Mom (she moved to AZ last year...and after spending Christmas down there, can't blame the lady!). And if you know my family, you know that is literally NO small feat. Even by December 21, we were a little worried we weren't all going to actually be in the same zip code for Christmas.

Brandon, Tenley and I flew into Arizona the Wednesday before Christmas, hoping to snatch up some quality time with my best friend/oldest sister Rebecca . We had so much fun stealing some one-on-one time with her family before the rest of the crew came in. By Friday afternoon, we were all waiting outside of her house for the big surprise. Brandon and I were in charge of getting all of the grandkids out to the cul-de-sac so that my mom was in her house alone. We got the older grandkids involved so that we could make sure every single kid replied with a "yes" when we excitedly exclaimed, 'Hey guys, do you want to go outside and play red-light-green-light?' That was their cue. The older kids were so awesome about getting everyone outside. I was the last one to leave my mom in her house. I say, "Mom, I'll be outside with the rest of the crew." And of course, she says, "Okay I am going to print some recipes out in my office." Office= the huge front window of her house. So I hurried outside and made sure nobody parked anywhere or came CLOSE to that window! Once we were all gathered together, we rang the doorbell and Rebecca's family was there to sing, "We wish you a merry Chrismtas", and then Rachelle's family chimed in, "We wish you a merry Christmas", and then the Wilkinsons, "We wish you a merry Christmas"...and for the surprise sisters, Lindsay "And a happy new year" and then Krista's family. Here was my mom's reaction:

Makes me want to cry again just thinking about it.

Needless to say, she had NO clue. Which was a relief to me because I really thought I had blown it at least 2x while we were there.

Mom: "Oh look I found these pacifiers of Jack's under my bed."

Me: "Oh I bet he will be excited when he sees those!"....."Because I will put them in my bag and bring them back to UT with me!"

We had so much fun together as a family, we played ultimate frisbee, went on jogs, walked to the park, ate, watched movies, and just spent time together...all 21 of us.

For our Mom's "60th" party, we gave her the gift of family pictures. Our photographer was honestly AMAZING, she has even sent us all CDs with the pictures on them, and she wrote us all thank you cards. If any of you three readers of mine live in Arizona, check her out: Amy Hill

Here are some pictures from the photoshoot. I will try to get some more up when Brandon is home so he can walk me through the "how to upload pictures on a Mac" phase. Noted: Brandon gave ME the ultimate surprise for Christmas and bought me a MacBook! That might explain my sudden burst of blogging/Facebooking/emailing....because I actually have a computer now. Hooray.

Here are the adults. I wish I had the picture of this, but I need to write it down to document how hilarious my sister Rachelle is. Our nephews are all boy, so they were pretty excited when they found a DEAD butterfly to play with. At the same time, Rachelle was remarking on how she didn't have a guy in the picture with her. So, she grabbed the butterfly and placed it on her shoulder. We are thinking that butterfly was DEFINITELY a male. :) Maybe you had to be there....it was funny.

Our Christmas card picture that I never got around to sending to anyone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE WILKINSONS

The posterity

I love this picture. My mom = just one of the girls

My beautiful Seesters

I LOVE these sisters/momma of mine

**note: if you think the outfit I'm wearing is my go-to outfit for any family picture I take,

then you would be right.

Arizona was literally magical and we loved drinking up every second we could with each other,. Having Tenley be around all 10 of her cousins was priceless. Though I would say, for the record, it literally broke my heart to not get to have my Dad witness all of the love. Divorce = no fun. So maybe in 2013 I will be blogging about our big surprise to my Dad/Eva's house for Christmas! (I'm safe to say that because I'm pretty sure my Dad doesn't even know my blog address :)