Merry & Bright > Christmas with the Holladay's

This year was so much fun. It all starts Christmas eve for Zack & I, and I feel like it will continue on into the new year. The partying and family time just keeps getting better.

My mom has claimed Christmas Eve will always be a celebration at my parents house. We went over there around 4:00 Christmas Eve and had a great time chatting with my parents and my 3 sisters. I have one sister who is in El Salvador this year (who we got to talk to-- more on that later) so it was just us four girls and my husband. The evening started out with some potatoes, peas, and white sauce (we have this meal EVERY Christmas eve, since I was little and it is so special because my mom only makes it once a year). We also had rolls, and party punch (a drink my family made up with cranberry sauce and sprite, really good). After dinner we moved onto the next event which was the talent show. Jenna and Rachel (my two youngest sisters) played a piano duet, then Cassidy showed off her self timer skills with the iphone camera for her talent My husband represented our family and juggled some apples he found in the kitchen. Cassidy took this picture of everyone during her "talent"

Next we put on the Natvitiy, there are a lot of boy roles in the Nativity story from the New Testament so we had to improvise:

Jenna played Mary. 

Rachel played the angels.

Cassidy played Joseph

I played the shepard and the sheep

Zack played the wise man

After the nativity my sisters unwrapped their Christmas pajamas and my dad read us the Polar Express (also a tradition we have done every Christmas Eve). 

Zack and I went home around 9:00 pm and opened our own Christmas pajamas up, then we went to bed. 

Christmas day we spent a few hours unwrapping gifts and enjoying our presents. I found this little beauty in my stocking:

It's a Green Amethyst stone accented with diamonds! I feel in love with it. My husband said he had a connection with Santa and knew that I would love it. He was right. 

After presents we went to my in-laws house for Omelets and to spend Christmas morning with them. 

John, Rose and Zack doing the "Sasquatch pose"... I have no idea what brought this on. 

My lovely husband, making me laugh right before the photo is taken. He always knows how to put a smile on my face. 

After breakfast with my in-laws we went to my aunts house to spend Christmas day with my family. 

My Grandma decided she wanted to have a dance party so they showed us all up with their amazing dancing skills. It was so cute to watch, my Grandpa was really a pretty good dancer. 

We played some white elephant bingo! My cousin Blake is wearing her present on her head. 

We talked to Tori on Skype. She is the one in El Salvador on her mission. It was so great, she looked even more beautiful then the day she left and she was so happy. She was just beaming from ear to ear and she couldn't remember how to say some words in English. It was fun to watch and see how much Spanish she knew after only living there for 4 months. 

Overall it was such a fun Christmas day and we were so blessed by everyone who gave us wonderful gifts. 

We are going to St. George tomorrow for a little family vacation with my in-laws, it should be a lot of fun. 

I am excited to get some warm weather and hopefully sunshine as well. Utah December's are not very good, not a lot of sun so the trip will be welcoming. 

Well I hope everyone's Christmas was wonderful. 

XO

Caitlin

New Blog, New Post! Disneyland 2013 Part 1 (and a free printable)

Hello friends!
I am loving my new blog design and that I have a fresh clean start for blogging. My old blog was great but after a while the links got messed up and my HTML/CSS was really confusing to navigate. Starting over new was just what I needed.
Today I am going to start off with sharing about our Disneyland trip! It was fabulous, and one of the best times I have had at Disneyland. I am going to do this story in three parts, the last part will be about some fun tips and tricks for you and your family to do the next time you go.
Zack and I packed up and left early Wednesday morning (6:00 am) for Anaheim, California. It's about a 10 hour drive from where we live so we settled in for the long road trip ahead of us. I had a lot of goodies to keep my entertained, my laptop with a car invertor so I could watch movies. My iPad which had my current books, some recent issues of the better homes and gardens special interest publications, my iPhone for pictures/video recording, and of course my CD case. I ended up sleeping a lot of the way and chatting with my husband about some fun old time memories. Those are the best moments about road trips, going down memory lane and laughing at awkward experiences.
We stopped in Las Vegas for some lunch at Smash Burger (so good you should try it) and then headed non-stop into California. We checked into our hotel, which is right across the street from Disneyland on Harbor Blvd. We always stay at Desert Inn Anaheim, its close and convenient and about half the price for staying on location at one of the themed hotels. The pool isn't so hot so if you have kids and you want a good pool I would check out the Sheraton or something along those lines. Once we checked into our hotel, we then went shopping at Downtown Disney. It was so fun this year, I love it when all the Christmas music is playing and the decorations are up. Zack even liked it as he said it wasn't too overdone so bonus for me. They had set up an ice skating rink down by the movie theater which was fun to see when it was so warm outside. The little kids loved it. After that we went up onto the roof and watched the Disneyland fireworks. They are always so magical and fun.

The next day we woke up early again and got in line over at Disneyland at 7:00 am. We had a magic morning entrance which allows you to enter the park an hour before it opens. This is really useful if you use it to your advantage and ride peter pan (because this line is always nuts) and other busy rides. We ended up riding about 20 rides that first day. It was raining and so many people left the park in the middle of the day. We walked onto a bunch of rides with no problem at all. It was so fun. 

I loved being at Disneyland with the love of my life. He is so great and awesome. We had such a blast. 

We met mickey mouse, minnie mouse, tinker bell and Thor! That was the best part of the whole trip for me, Thor is my favorite avenger so it was great meeting him. 

He made a joke right before we took this photo so I was laughing. I don't know how he pulled off such a serious face after being so hilarious. 

One thing that I found difficult about the trip was the budget. Luckily we came home with extra money. I over budgeted on a lot of items but it was nice having some flexibility and being able to purchase what we needed food wise and buy some fun souvenirs. I originally budgeted about $15 per person per meal. Breakfast was free at our hotel every day and we used that to our advantage. We brought a bunch of snacks with us and some days we ate so much snacking that we only needed one meal. Most of the meals I found were about $10.00 per person so I over budgeted in that aspect. I will talk in more detail about food in Part 2! 

Before we left for the trip I made a budget worksheet to help me organize what expenses had to be taken care of. I only had four categories, hotel, fuel, food, and souvenirs. This covered everything that we would buy during our trip. The final product looked like this:

(to get your free Disneyland Budget Worksheet click here)

It worked out great for our trip and was really nice to help me see what things worked and what didn't. At the end of the trip I filled out all the actual prices and discovered we had a few extra dollars in each category. This was great news, especially since Christmas is only a month away. 

Well folks that is it for my first blog post on the new blog. Oh and to kick things off I am going to offer the Disneyland Budget Worksheet as free printable until the new year so grab yours while you can! 

Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around for more. 

XO

Caitlin