Christmasness

The beginning of our trip back to Arizona for Christmas was hilarious.
Ben and I were on our way to the airport when my mom reminded me that my brother (who is serving as a missionary in our NY mission) was going to be at the Syracuse airport also that afternoon!
I totally forgot and wasn't thinking about it, but he was going to pick up the new missionaries at the airport that afternoon.

I ran around the small airport looking for him but he was not there. We missed him by one hour early. He was coming after our plane was scheduled to take off. Too bad, but close call!
We walked up to our gate and came to find these 4 missionaries sitting at our gate. These are the missionaries from his mission that were going home that day, on our same flight!
The one on the far right served with Michael a couple months ago, and the Sister served in Ithaca for awhile!
So we had a great beginning to our journey to AZ.

We made it back safely and had a busy couple days before Christmas.
We switched back and forth between mine and Ben's house in order to catch all of our family before some of them left after Christmas!

Steven and I rofling as usual.

We had a joint family cousins party a few days before Christmas.

My cute nephew Jackson is obsessed with "choo choos" as pictured here

We had a gift exchange, played chimes, and enjoyed each others company.

Arizona was pretty warm for us, so they had to create fake snow at the mall to make it feel a bit more "Christmasy"

Christmas Eve day was a blast. We played some tennis, soccer, and then hit up the hot tub!

Then we decorated sugar cookies and played some games.

Switch over to the Lewis family Christmas Eve dinner and festivities.
Singing around the piano is quite common at their house.

We got to be Mary & Joseph in the reenactment of Luke 2.

Christmas morning was busy with lots of kids!

Then we transitioned back to my house for Christmas evening

So much fun in such a short time!!

Post Christmas Party

After Christmas was just as busy. Switching forth between both houses made it fun and crazy!

My lovely sister-in-law Annie made delicious caramel apples for everyone

We did a lot of hanging out with Ste

Even more fun family get togethers

And of course seeing a few good friends!

Oh yeah... and our 2nd year anniversary!! We've officially been married two years. Hooray!
Time has flown by and yet I feel like I have lived in Ithaca with Ben for quite awhile already.

We went to Oreganos, where our first date was three years ago to the day!
We also decided to celebrate more officially back in Ithaca when we weren't trying to see family

We did also go to the Mesa temple where we were married two years ago!

Then it was New Year's Eve. We kept it low key as we hung out with both of our families.

Finally, we celebrated our cute nephew Rhett's 2nd birthday

Thanks for all the fun and sun Arizona!

Pre Christmas Festivities

Before we left for the holidays Ben and I had some fun making gingerbread houses with some friends! Ben's was quite amazing, and definitely better than mine. He was very proud.

We loved our Douglas Fir tree and it was fun having it up before taking off

Some of my work friends had a cookie baking party. We made way too many cookies but they were delicious.

We had a few Christmas decorations up, but we were excited to go home and hang out with our families!