Christmas festivities!

Merry Christmas! It came and went so fast and I had such an amazing time with my family! On my dad's side of the family we have Swedish blood running through our veins so we have many Swedish traditions! Almost all of our traditions are during Christmas Eve (except when we sing the Swedish birthday song) and basically all of our Christmas festivities are Swedish.

We usually get together during the evening around 6 and have dinner. It is a very humble meal. It definitely is not my favorite! I remember asking my dad why we couldn't have good food and he responded by telling me that we eat these foods as remembrance of our ancestors and that it was probably an amazing dinner to them. He also told me we eat the humble meal as remembrance of Christ's humble beginning, so I try not to complain too much. Some of the things we eat are Korv, (a sort of sausage-like food) Lutfisk, (which is a fish), and boiled potato chunks. The bottom left photo is Swedish Cake. We usually cook those all December and when we were younger we used make a TON of them and hand them out to everyone in the St. George Police Department and our neighborhood. They are my favorite!

After dinner we eat rice pudding and everyone has to say a poem. It usually consista of something like "Rice is nice especially with spice. Thank goodness I don't have lice!" Some of us go all out and some of us are totally lame (me). My poem this year was.. "This rice is fantastic.. there is a new movie coming out about a park called Jurassic". Lame right? haha! Once you say your poem you can dig in to your pudding. There is an almond in one of the bowls and whoever gets it gets good luck for the year! This year Luke got the almond! Lucky! 

After dinner we gather around the tree and have a Christmas program. Everyone has to participate or NO presents! Someone usually reads in Luke 2, my dad usually plays the guitar, I read "The Three Trees" book, and everyone else does something Christmas-like! 

After the program we open presents! Yes we open presents on Christmas Eve! Well half of them. Basically we open gifts from each other on Christmas Eve and the rest from Santa on Christmas Day. My dad is the unofficial official distributor of the presents.

Its Emma's first Christmas! Christmas with a child is so much better! It was so fun to watch her tear into the presents and look at all the fun gifts. My family got her some great stuff!

I really didn't want to go home Christmas Eve night so I slept on the couch while Trevor slept on the floor at my parents. I couldn't sleep AT ALL! I seriously slept like 1-2 hours.. I must have been excited for Santa! ha.. So we all woke up around 7 and went upstairs to see what Santa brought us! Santa brought Emma a walker! She doesn't know if she likes it or not yet.. We had breakfast and played with all of our new things! It was such an amazing Christmas! It was so fun to have my Uncle, Aunt, cousins, and grandparents there! My nieces and two families came to our Christmas Eve program, too. 

I'm so grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ. I love Christmas and the spirit of Christ that we all feel during the holidays. I hope to keep that feeling all year long. I'm so very grateful for his atoning sacrifice that he made for us so that we can return to live with him. I love my Savior. Merry CHRISTmas!