Christmas Craze

Christmas is over, but an entry dedicated to those few crazy days is needed. Tyler, Lucy and I went to our ward on Christmas Eve and enjoyed the Christmas program presented by the Cochrane ward. Then we quickly headed over to my parents' house for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and 'hanging out'. After stuffing ourselves on some of the world's finest food creations (roast potatoes, stove-top stuffing and gravy, being a few of my favorites), we shared a Bourne-family "twelve days of Christmas" song that Tyler and I wrote, and everyone else headed to the Heritage Park Nativity, while our family went to the Mundy's for the annual Christmas Party. There, we visited with all of Tyler's extended family and participated in the usual gift exchange. The family is getting so big now that a fun exchange of gifts turned into a 2-hour event. At the end of that party we headed back to mom and dad's for the night. it was pretty late and by the time we got there, all other children had gone to bed and Lucy headed there pretty quick too. The adults stayed up for a bit attempting to play a few games, but instead ended up sharing stories of when we've been the most scared. How does that topic always come up late at night?
The next morning, we arose at a decent time (8:30am) as we had to wait for Trevor G to get home from the Fire Hall. The chaos began, and 2 1/2 hours later the mountain of presents were opened. We all settled down for a delicious meal of pancakes and got little ones back off to bed for a much needed nap. Again, the adults played games and got ourselves somewhat cleaned up.
After Lucy's nap we headed to Williamson's to exchange gifts with them and have their traditional Christmas Day dinner. Much of the same fixings. Mmm-mm, two days in a row!
We slept in our own beds Christmas night. On Boxing Day, I headed out to the mall to get my hands on a few deals and Tyler and Lucy went to the Cochrane chapel with his family to play volleyball.

It was a crazy few days, but fun to spend time with both family's. Christmas is getting so big, we'll have to start hosting Christmas morning in our own home soon and visiting all the relatives here and there.

Setting up for Christmas 2006

We had a fun time setting up the Christmas tree and letting Lucy participate. The Christmas tree box had been sitting in our living room for a couple of days and I had to keep telling her we had to wait for Daddy's muscles to open the box. Finally, he waiting was over and we opened the box and set up the tree. She kept repeating throughout the process, "Wow, cool!"
She enjoyed the lights and helping to put decorations on the tree. Each decoration she tried to put on the tree she would put on the same branch so it got pretty weighted down and we had to redistribute the decorations onces she was done. She ended up getting pretty goofy as the night went on when she realized that we were interested to see how she was reacting to everything. It became a bit of a show.
Surprisingly, Lucy was really good about not touching the tree or decorations once it was all set up. We had a nativity set on a low shelf for her to play with as she was fascinated with the baby Jesus and Mary.
She didn't take too well to most Santa decorations this year, but was more interested in Frosty and Reindeer.

Most of her Christmas excitement was centered around seeing Christmas lights everywhere we go and singing Christmas songs. It got to the point that she would start to request which color of lights she wanted to see next. "How 'bout....green ones." At one point we were driving around in Cochrane viewing lights and we came across a house that was particularly well decorated. We looked at it for a few minutes and then started to drive away. Lucy piped up right away and said, "Dad, turn 'round please." So we went back for another look. How can you deny such manners.

Video Scavenger

The Deacon's were in charge of the joint activity in December and Tyler and his boys planned a video scavenger hunt. All the kids seemed to really enjoy it and we had a lot of fun coming up with difficult tasks for them to accomplish and take a picture of. Here, we see one team going through the McDonald's drive-thru without a car. Other tasks included getting a picture at various landmarks in Cochrane, giving a hug to someone who needed it, taking a picture with the whole team in a tree; and creating a human pyramid.

Some have claimed that Tyler might have been called to be the Deacon's leader, because he has a similar mentality...hmmm?