Life As The Taylors

Christmas time in Utah is always full of parties. Bring on the food and games! I did miss my family a lot this year as I will always when I am not with them, but it was nice to be able to see and spend time with Dustin’s family, especially the ones we don’t see that often. Christy and David did stop in for a night which was nice. All in all the holiday season was crazy, busy and fun.

The company I work for put on a nice Christmas party at Sundance. They had a catered dinner (flowing hot chocolate yay!), a raffle, and also gave away nice gift baskets at the end. I, along with everyone else, was hoping to win the 60 inch TV or iPad they were giving away, but ended up with a $50 Best Buy gift card. I wasn’t complaining (too much)! That was actually a very nice gift even though I didn’t know what I would use it for. I enjoyed spending some fun time with coworkers and was grateful for the time, effort, and money the company put into the party. The gift baskets were very nice, and we especially loved the Yankee candle that was in it. We use it all the time, and it makes our place smell fantastic!

Some of the decorations from the party

The Taylor Family Christmas party was great, and it was very nice to have everyone there. We had good food, games, and presents. Dustin’s parents were very generous in giving everyone gift cards as well as extra gifts. We felt very loved and blessed to be a part of a great family.

A matching game put on by Momma Taylor

Can we ever go without taking these types of pics? Probably not

Such a princess!

He will be such a good dad

She is so adorable!

A few days after the Taylor family party was the Price family party that they do every year. We had soup, salad and roles for dinner, played games, sang hymns, and had time to catch up with the relatives. Dustin’s grandparents are very generous and give everyone a gift each year as well as a box of oranges.

This is Grandpa trying to open a present with oven mittens on…not an easy task.

Christmas tree time! The time of year when you drive around to a ton of different tree lots and stand in the freezing cold and either argue about which tree to get or are both so undecided that it can easily turn into an argument (this would be Dustin and I haha). Don’t get me wrong…I love Christmas, Christmas trees, and all that goes with it, but the actual picking of the tree can be a painful process sometimes, especially in freezing Utah. I actually thought the tree we ended up with was beautiful. It was medium sized, and had a whitish tint to the branches. It almost looked like it was frosted. It took us a couple of days to actually decorate it once we had it set up, but we did get the lights strung and the ornaments hung.

I’m guessing there was a game on in the background

I don’t have any pictures of us hanging the lights, but it was quite the process. I had never actually put lights on a full sized christmas tree and Dustin was kind enough to teach me that no, I can’t just wind the lights around the tree in five minutes and hope that it looks good. It took us (mostly him) an hour plus to carefully wind the lights in and around the branches. He did an amazing job! We used about four different strands of lights and found out too late that they weren’t all the same colors and that the top strand’s red lights weren’t working. We didn’t care too much, we were just glad to have it done! Hanging the ornaments was my job, but I was okay with that since I told him he gets to do lights every year

She’s a growin’!

We were happy with our work when all was finished, despite the mismatched and non-working lights. Sadly, the middle strand of lights died about a week before christmas Our tree was mismatched and partially lite, but it was ours and we still enjoyed turing it on at night relaxing on the couch.