Christmas 2009

This year Ben and I had a very enjoyable Christmas. We started off heading to Bountiful on Christmas Eve for the annual Clark ugly sweater party! Not everyone participated, but here are those who did.

Robert (Ben'd Dad), Becky (Ben's sister), Evelyn (Ben's Mom), Ben, Jen, and David (Ben's brother)

And the winners are...Dave and Becky! It seems as though the animal prints were the favorite :)

We played this awesome 12 Days of Christmas game where we had to act out the song being as creative as possible. It was VERY funny and entertaining. My favorite was the 3 French Hens performed by Ben's parents Buddy also got to join in on the fun of Christmas because Evelyn made him an outfit. As you can tell, He was not as thrilled about it as we were :) Thanks a lot Grandma! Next, we played some more games, ate some food, and played Christmas songs with homemade chimes. To finish off the evening we listened to Ben's Dad read the Christmas story from the Bible while the kids set up nativity scenes. It was a really fun evening and we really enjoyed spending time with the family.

And what would Christmas Eve be without a family portrait in ugly sweaters in front of the Christmas tree?We headed back to My Parents' house to open our Christmas Eve pajamas and then we went to bed. The next morning, the rest of the family came over (in their Christmas pj's) for our traditional Christmas breakfast, Eggs Benedict.

After that, we awaited my baby brother's phone call. He is serving a mission in Sweden and we haven't heard from him for 9 months! He didn't get to call on Mother's Day since he was still in the MTC. It was SO great to hear his voice. We had a conference call speaker phone so the whole family (including Grandparents) were in the room and everyone got to chat with him. My little niece, Britlee, even sang him some songs.

Mom, Jen, Britlee, and Cindi listening to Elder Arko Paizlee borrowing Buddy's Santa hat Ben and Buddy hanging out Time went by so quickly, I could have just listened to him all day! Because of the time change, His Christmas was almost over and ours had just begun! After about an hour and 20 minutes, the hard part came. Telling him goodbye for 6 months...sad. That was the best part of Christmas for me!

After the phone call, we hung out for a while, got ready and headed up to Ogden for another missionary phone call. Ben's baby brother is also serving a mission right now so we got to hear from 2 Elders that day! Our Christmas was filled with spending time with family and it was so much fun!