Our first Christmas season together was loads of fun and filled with lights, games, friends, and family. This is just a little glimpse into our first Christmas together, through mostly pictures, because that is my favorite way to blog(:
So our Christmas season started a few weeks back with a trip down to Saint George where we decorated a tree with one family (The Clarkes) and went and cut down a tree with the other (The Armours). The Clarke family tree turned out beautiful, and my mother-in-law showed me how pretty a tree can be with ribbon and grape-vine in it(:
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We went up to Brian Head near my family's cabin to find the Armour Family tree. The one we finally found was probably around 19-20 feet tall and beautiful. But of course, that wouldn't fit in our house. So we cut it down to 18 feet for our 18 foot ceiling. My dad and Erik were very glad that Derek was there as well to help with the heavy lifting(;
We also got to make gingerbread houses (out of graham crackers), a tradition in the Armour abode. From the top left we have Amber's, mine, Rachel's, Bryant's, Derek's, Erik's. It was lots of fun while also challenging to get them to stay(:
Fun fact: Derek's held a glass cup full of water and still didn't break. It was pretty solid(:
The finished (and a bit blurry) product of the Armour tree(: If you can't tell, the star touches the ceiling.
We had to go back up to Provo to finish up finals week and work, but we enjoyed some fun Christmas traditions with married friends Scott and Leah(: We went to the Tree of Life in Draper, which is a giant tree covered in lights that looks like the Tree of Life from Lehi's dream, and the Salt Lake Temple to look at the lights(: It definitely brought in the spirit of Christmas.
We got to spend Christmas day with both families which was awesome(: We learned some new family traditions and grew closer as our own little family. We watched the nativity and looked at lights and felt the spirit in general our entire trip.
We got a lot of very generous gifts from both families (including handmade quilts from Derek's mom), but this is one that I thought was really cool and happened to already have a picture of. My sister Amber made this for Derek and me. It's a personalized Family Proclamation, which highlights certain points and is just designed in a really cool way. We love all that we received and had so much fun giving gifts as well. It was a lovely first Christmas and has just made us excited for all of the holidays to come(: We hope that everyone else had a great holiday season and as we bring in 2015 we hope to continue growing closer together and to all of our friends and family. Happy New Year!(:
