Tucson Christmas

After our Grand Canyon Adventures we headed on down to Tucson to spend Christmas with Aaron's family (now my family too :))...about a six hour car ride. Linnea actually did quite well during the 8 hour car ride to Tusayan, and she lasted most of the trip down to Tucson, but she decided she was through about 40 minutes before we reached our destination. She cried and screamed and cried, poor thing! But alas, we did make it!

And we had a wonderful time!! I got to experience the Johnson traditions for the first time...starting with opening one present on Christmas Eve...now they actually changed that tradition this year thanks to my brother-in-law, Zach. He put out there the idea to do a white elephant gift exchange, so instead of picking one gift to open from under the tree, we picked a gag gift from our collected pile, or stole one from someone else. My husband was the meen guy, and stole from his own mother what looks like a mechanic's suit (she was going to use it to cover up when painting...sorry Liz!). I picked my own gift and got stuck with it...it's a pajama type outfit that people used to where way back in the day (I think)...I can just picture an old man wearing it out in a log cabin somewhere. It even has a hole in the back for going to the bathroom. We got some good laughs out of it!
We may have even started a new Christmas Eve tradition thanks to my mother-in-law! The majority of us bundled up and went Christmas caroling in the neighborhood...sad to say only two neighbors were home, but we sang to the empty houses, too, just in case they were rather slow in getting to the door :) lol! We even recruited another family who was just going for a walk--it was a family who was meeting up for Christmas from all over the states, and the parents of the family live about an hour from where I grew up in NY...it is a small world.

And the traditions continued on Christmas day...Cheesy egg casserole, which was very nummy. Choreg....a yummy braided pastry/bread thing :) that was SO delicious!! Grandpa reading parts of the Christmas story and the different names for Jesus in the Bible. Opening stockings...one of which contained lots of dark chocolate (that would be mine...thank you Sweety!!), and then on to the gift giving. Then a beautiful walk outside, a yummy turkey dinner, and a birthday cake for Jesus. It was such a blessing to be with my other half's family on Christmas for the first time! Thank you Doug, Liz, Zach, and Grace for being so gracious in giving up your personal space to a bunch of wild people :) ...for feeding us, giving us a place to sleep, serving us, and for loving us!
And of course, it was Linnea's first Christmas...something which was exciting for us, but she had no clue...prayerfully someday Christmas will be a very special day for her...not because of presents under the tree, but because Christ came down from heaven, came as a man, came to live perfectly, came to be ridiculed, came to be persecuted, came to die, came to give us life eternal...prayerfully that is why Christmas will excite her.

My father-in-law got stuck with my gift :), who he named Rafaela....lol, the lady at Goodwill even wrapped it seperate for me because she said it looked like a very special piece :)

Linnea with Uncle Zach!

Bath time at Grammy and Grampy's...we tried to be modest :)

Pictures from our day-after-Christmas hike to come!