The most wonderful time of the year next to summer!

Wowee, did we have a busy Christmas this year! It was the first together of many more for Brig and I and I think it was one of the best yet! Christmas is Brig's favorite holiday and he really got me especially excited for it this year. I guess the holiday kind of started with the getting and setting up of the Christmas tree. Mick and Becki usually have a fake one upstairs and get a real one to put downstairs, and it is so fun to have two! This year they decided that it would be especially fun to get a permit to cut one down for the basement. I was really busy with my finals and was unable to go, and Mick didn't end up getting off work in time, so Brig and Becki packed up the saw and the truck and went all by themselves! I could be wrong, but I think it was about a 2 hour drive to where they got the tree in Idaho, so it took them awhile! But they picked a really nice tree that stayed fresh well after Christmas.

After finals were over I finally had room to breathe! Things went really well, much better than I expected. I got 3 A's and a B+ which was great. My photo final was especially time consuming this semester and it was great to have it all over with! I'll think about posting my images, i'm always a little self conscious about showing people my work. We'll see. I worked a little at my job over the break, but for the most part we just relaxed and hung out with family. Brig started a new job as a security guard at the University and is enjoying it so far. It's a good job for him because he gets to spend a little time alone where he can think about things. He is very contemplative and has always enjoyed working by himself, haha. My work is still going well, I really enjoy it. It's crazy to say, but I'm actually kind of looking forward to going back to my normal schedule!

Christmas Eve:
This year Christmas eve was a little unusual! We had most of the family here for the day which was really great! My sister Candice and her family are still living in Germany, and we always miss not having them with us every Christmas! We were VERY glad to see them over this last summer though, and hope they will be able to come again this summer. Back to Christmas eve: Since Nicole and Dustin's families are living away from Logan they came up early in the day to hang out with the family. Apparently the kids were getting a little antsy so they decided it would be a good idea to go bowling! We've never done this before but it was really fun to do something new, even though I probably bowled the worst game ever in the history of bowling! It was very unusual. Weird. Anyways, I've posted a lot of picture for the events of this season so here goes!

I thought this picture was so cute! This is Gage and Libby. They're both really good at smiling for the camera! I think they're getting used to me taking hundreds of pictures every time I see them. They're just a few months apart so it's fun to see them interact.

Cute Kade and Elliet! They were being so sweet together. Elliet is getting really good at taking care of her brother and sister and all her younger cousins. Without Candice's kids here, Elliet is the oldest and she can be very motherly at times. It's really fun to see the nieces and nephews all playing nicely. They're all pretty close, so they don't always play nice, but most of the time I just want to spoil them rotten!

My buddy Gage. He can be kinda shy sometimes!

This is the same picture as above, but I thought Kade was so cute in it I wanted to crop in on just his face. He is such a sweet boy.

Christian, Bretton, Luke and baby Charley gettin ready to tear it up on the... lanes? Not sure what you call it!

Charley with her Daddy. She is one of the sweetest babies I have ever seen! And so chubby! Luke is very sweet too, haha

Gangstas. At least that's what they think, haha. Little brothers Christian and Bretton.

Gage was cracking us up! He would bowl and then have to come over the rack and put his elbow on it while he waited to see how many pins he knocked down! It was so cute, we called him "Mr. Cool" the rest of the day. He also had an old cell phone in his pocket that he would take out and check in between his first and second rolls. He's probably been watching Christian too much!

Brother Dustin, Sweet, sweet husband Brigham, and brother Christian laughing at something funny (Probably Casey, haha).

Some action. He did very well, much better than me! I didn't put any pictures of me in here because I'm so embarrassed!

Hmm... not a picture taker this one. He's a pretty good sport most of the time though.

Cute Elliet and Kade again.

Brother Casey and Libber Lou. She has a hard time looking at the camera sometimes, haha.

Adorable baby Stockton and his Daddy. He is such a sweet and good baby! It's a about time we had a few of those in our family!

Stockton, and Sisters-in-law Katie and Heather. Both beautiful girls and great people to be able to put up with Casey and Dustin!


Traditional Christmas Eve:
At my families house Christmas eve has always kind of been the big event. We usually kick it off with an amazing dinner prepared by my sweet, sweet mother. Minus the au'gratin potatoes, the dinner is one of my very favorite parts of the evening (before you think that I'm being mean to my mother I just need to clarify that I'm kind of abnormal because I don't really like potatoes. So it's not her cooking, its my pickiness). The dinner is a little bit random, but it consists of potatoes, ham (usually), mexican dip and crab dip with crackers and chips, a salad, various breads and chocolates, and my very favorite part of Chrsitmas, Zopfa! Zopfa is a Swiss bread that is braided and very very fattening! It's full of butter and everything that bread should be made of! It's a good thing that I can't bake or I'd probably make it at least once a week. The chocolates that we have are ones that we make a few days before Christmas. I'm not a huge chocolate fan, but it's always really fun to get together and make them. You can always tell which ones the kids did and try to avoid them! Just kidding. It's a really good time, and we don't care how they look! The other thing that my mom makes for Christmas are mince pies. Most people know what mince meat is, but I don't think I've ever heard of another family making them very often. My mom does them a little differently and makes small, muffin sized pies. She's gotten especially smart these past couple of years and has started making little bite sized ones! I always have at least one or two of the bite sized ones, but usually can't eat much more than that.

After Dinner comes singing! I am going to go ahead and say that our family is probably the WORST group of singers this side of the Mississippi. I might even go so far as to say the whole U.S. The good news is that this makes it especially entertaining and fun! We have a really good time laughing at each other and especially at my dad. This is the only day of the year where he breaks out his guitar. Every year before Christmas he said, "Now this year I'm going to practice before Christmas Eve," and he never does! We love laughing at him starting when no one is ready and trying to play verses that nobody knows. And it just gets better every Christmas! Brig comes from a family of incredible singers, so I think he may have been a little shocked at this circus act, but he doesn't sing out loud anyways, and I think was thoroughly entertained with the rest of us.

Part of the family getting ready to sing! I'm usually the designated page turner, but I decided to let Bretton take over this year. The page turning wasn't nearly as good.

Here's my sister Nicole doing the actions to "Up on the Housetop." She can be very animated, haha. I took a picture of her pulling a very funny face, but I didn't think she'd appreciate me putting it in here. Call me if you're in need of some blackmail ;)

Our very favorite song to sing is "Oh Holy Night" because of my dad. There are certain parts to the song where he rocks out! We all laugh so hard. I really do look forward to watching him every year. This year there were about 7 cameras all pointed at him while we were singing. It's alright though, he likes being on stage.

Nicole and Casey filming "Oh Holy Night." I got a video of it two years ago, don't worry.

The other entertaining part of "Oh Holy Night" is watching my brothers. It's fun when they all sit together, but I only got these two this year. They really sing out, if you can't tell! And then there's Brig in the background barely moving his lips as usual, haha. Love it.

After singing we always listen to a billion year old tape of the nativity story. The narrator is Burl Ives (not sure how to spell his first name). We really love to listen to the funny rhymes and especially the ones where you can tell they couldn't think of a good rhyme and had to throw something in there that doesn't really work. He has a great voice though and I hope I can get a copy of the tape to listen to when we have our own family!

Big eyed Baby Charley.

After the story, we open presents! Not all of our presents, just the ones from our person. We draw names like a lot of families, and keep them secret, so its fun to finally see who had who. Casey gave me our family favorite, Rustlers Rhapsody, and also gave me Land Before Time #1 because I used to love it so much when I was little! It was a pretty funny gift to get. He knew me too well!

Kade opening his present from one of the other nieces or nephews.

Gage being Mr. Cool again. He was pulling that tough guy face trying so hard not to smile, but he couldn't help it when he finally got his present open! He is too cute.

Elliet with a very cool present! It's too hard to explain but it's very cool, haha. She's a great artist and will be able to do some very fun things with it.

Bretton gave Brig a bow sling! He had really wanted one for a long time, so it was a great gift! And I just want to say I think he looks really great in that picture too!

Heather opening her present!

Luke got a Balaklava that he can wear for biking in the winter! He's crazy! He's planning to do an Ironman in St. George coming up here pretty soon. He'll do a great job, I'm excited to see how it goes!

Dustin getting excited about his present, haha.

Brig gave Casey these sweet basketball shorts. I really liked them. I had Nicole and gave her some soccer shorts and socks. I didn't have a very good picture of her, bummer.

All the married kids pitched in and gave my mom and dad a Garmin. The only problem was, they had gotten one for themselves! The very same one even! Nicole found out that they had gotten each other that 2 days before Christmas Eve and there was no time to take it back and get something else. So we gave them the option of keeping the Garmin so they could have two, or exchanging it for a magic bullet mixer and a chi (both things they wanted). I'm still not sure they've decided what they're doing. My guess is they'll keep the Garmin because if they only have one, my dad will always want to wear it, ha.

Since none of the kids were going to be there for Christmas morning except Brig and I and my little brothers, we also opened a present from my parents. We all got this awesome picture of the temple that I love! It looks like it may have originally been some sort of image transfer, which is very cool.

For my whole life, all the kids have slept together in the same room on Christmas eve. Luckily this year Christian was old enough that he didn't have to keep asking me if I was awake every 5 minutes because he was too excited and couldn't sleep (that was a long time ago, but it's remained a very funny joke between us)! This year everyone older than me had their own family Christmas mornings with their kids, so they went home that night. Since Brig and I don't have kids, I was determined to hold to tradition for as long as possible! So the four of us slept downstairs together, Me, Brig, Christian and Bretton, haha. We watched Christmas Vacation (classic) and may or may not have played a little call of duty, I don't know. And as usual in this picture, Christian and Bretton are being goofy and Brig doesn't want to look at the camera. He said he doesn't take pictures when he's in bed. Excuses, excuses!


Christmas Morning #1 at the Cranes!
We were very lucky that the way our families do Christmas morning is so much different that we could do two Christmas mornings and spend time with everyone! Pig's family likes to do it very early in the morning and my family is generally pretty lazy and doesn't ever wake up until around 9 or 10. We decided that since it would work out this way that we might as well do both! Why not, it's Christmas!? We rose around 6:30 and drove over to Crane's/Our house and started our first Christmas morning together! We had a really great time and it was really fun for me to experience something different. Present were Brig and I, Brig's parents Mick and Becki, and his sister Shannon and her husband Brady.

Brig got a snowboard! His old one was about 10 years old, so it was about time for a new one! This present was mostly from his parents. He also got some fun hunting stuff that he wanted.

Brady and Shannon. They're expecting a baby soon and I can't wait to see how beautiful she is!

The King and Queen themselves!

Just us! I got a lot of really great things too including a super cute coat that I can wear to work and some other really cute clothes! We were really glad to be able to spend some time with Brigham's family on Christmas. We were just sad to miss out on the yummy breakfast that Becki made!


Christmas Morning #2 at the Ashcrofts!
When we got back to my parents house the boys were still asleep, as expected. We woke them up and had our traditional light breakfast of breads (we don't really get very hungry in the mornings). After that, we all line up from youngest to oldest and walk up the stairs to see our presents! It used to be really cute when we were little because the youngest would be the shortest and everyone got progressively taller from there, but this year we've discovered that my youngest brother is now the very tallest in the family! Not including in-laws of course (we have a brother in law who is 6'5").

Mom reading the letter from Santa. That darn Santa, he always leaves the funnies letters. He was especially excited to see Brig at our house this year!

Bretton listening to Santa say funny things about him needing to cut his hair or something (he says that every year).

Christian getting some cologne so he can finally stop smelling. Just kidding, he always smells good!

Dad getting some running gear! Love that little smirk of his!

Brig had written down a very specific list of things that he was asking for. The list included the brand, where to find the item, the specifics of color/pattern, and the price. While this was extremely helpful, I thought it was kind of boring and wanted to get him at least one thing that he didn't expect. I found these BYU football highlight dvd's and he really liked them and was very surprised! He also got some more hunting things that he was excited about. He gave me some really great things too! I got two pairs of boots and some other cute clothes that I really wanted! He spoiled me rotten!

The family got Beatles Rock Band and we had a fun time playing that after opening presents. My dad had an especially fun time singing!

Gothic looking Christian, haha. This is just one that I edited for fun.

Dad rockin' out. Love it.

Love the attitude.

Mi Madre. She's pretty good at the guitar!

Me on the drums. I probably just messed up and that's why I'm smiling, haha. The drums are the most fun for me and I think I've actually gotten pretty decent!

Classic.

Mom and Bretty.

All in all, we had a really great Christmas! After rock band, we went back to Crane's and had a yummy Christmas dinner and played games. Brigham's family got a Wii which has been really fun! On the 28th we had the Ashcroft family party where we got some great food storage and an autobiography of my Grandma. I've been reading it and am really enjoying it! It makes me want to keep better track of what my life is like so that I can write it all down one day to give to my grandkids. The 29th we spent with Brigham's family. His sister Jenn and her family were here for the week, and his sister JulieAnn and her family also came up for a few days! We celebrated Mick's birthday and had a really nice time together! It's always fun to hang out with the Crane's, they know how to have a good time!

A few other things that happened recently, we said farewell to our good friends Becca and Dave. Dave is doing an internship in Washington D.C. so they will be there for the next 4 months. It was very sad because they've been such great friends and are the only people we really hang out with sadly! ha. They will be missed, but it will be very fun for them to experience something new for awhile!

A real quick plug in for New Years Eve:
We had a really great night! Our friends Dan and Danika invited us to their house for a little get together. My brother Dustin and Sister-in-law Heather also came, and we played some fun games and had a really fun time reminiscing and talking about silly things. It's always a good time to hang out with them, and I hope we can do it more often! Brig, Dust, and Dan all went to school together forever and have been good friends for a long time.

At this time of year it's really great to have such awesome family and friends to celebrate with! I'm very grateful for every person who has helped Brig and I in any way and especially grateful to know that I have a Heavenly Father and Brother who care about us and are always there for us. I am very grateful for this church, and love it with all of my heart. I am so glad to have married someone as amazing as Brig and to know that we will be together forever. Merry Christmas everyone!