Christmas (the February Recap)

This year was a great Christmas, though different from any we've had before. We missed my sister this year; we didn't get to see her at all on Christmas because she was at my parent's house in the morning and we were there in the afternoon. We had Samantha with us; last year she was just a peanut in my belly :). AND this is the first year that Scott didn't see his parents at Christmas time :(.
Prior to Christmas, we had tried getting some family photos done by our friend Melody Odell who I know from Yucaipa. We had it all set up to meet her in Oak Glen on the 16th to have our photos done at Riley's farm. That morning, I was feeling a little sick, but I thought I would be okay so I still went into work for a half day. After I got off work, I was driving to Target on Tyler and all of a sudden felt like I was going to puke. **Warning - this is gross!**I tried to get off of the road as quickly as possible as I figured it probably wasn't too safe to be driving and throwing up at the same time. I was in the left lane so I moved into a left turn lane that had to yield to oncoming traffic. There was a lady in front of me who, even though there was no oncoming traffic, would not turn. I waited as patiently as I could (which included some horn honking and yelling) until she finally turned and then zoomed onto the side street after her. I turned into the first open shopping center driveway and as I was turning, I barfed :( Don't worry, I still had enough left that I could puke outside too so it wasn't like I got it all in my car, but I was covered in it and had to drive all the way home that way :( After a few more hours of debating if I could still do the photo shoot (and puking some more) I called Melody and cancelled. We still have to reschedule with her on a day when I am not puking my guts out. Anyways, enough gross-ness...on to Christmas!
We spent Christmas eve with the remaining Brown clan in southern California. Scott's sister, Stacia, and her family, Layne and Hyrum, and his brother, Jeff, and his girlfriend, Sophia. It was a nice informal night at our house. We did chicken tacos, rice, chips, salsa, etc...basically Mexican Christmas :) It was a delicious (if I do say so myself) and a nice break from the normal Christmas food of ham and turkey.
Christmas day, we got up and made breakfast before opening presents. Nothing fancy, just eggs with cheese and bacon. After breakfast we proceeded to open our presents. Samantha LOVED all of the wrapping paper and had a lot of fun focusing on that. We didn't get her a lot of toys this year because she still has a pretty short attention span and is entertained by more inexpensive things. She did get a bouncer from our friend Traci (thanks Traci!!) and a ball popper from our friend Kristin (thanks Kristin!!). She really liked this big brown bag that Kristin's present came in and enjoyed crinkling that for a while.
Christmas fell on a Sunday this year so we went to church and then headed out to Yucaipa to see my parents in the afternoon. It was fun to spend Christmas eve and Christmas day with family. Best of all, we loved spending it with our sweet baby Samantha!
Pictures to come soon :)