Christmas was wonderful!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this holiday season, and I've so been looking forward to giving my mom her gift. I couldn't mention it before, because she reads my blog and I didn't want to spoil her surprise.

Remember me talking about going to Vegas and getting pics w/the sunglasses? (If not, go back to the Viva Las Vegas blog in October.)

Well, since we couldn't find the pineapple sunglasses in Vegas, we found them online and bought them. (We bought the Star Trek ones while in Vegas.) Anyway, I coordinated w/all the family members who didn't yet have a picture in them and took pics of EVERYONE -- all the kids and grandkids. This meant mailing them to South Carolina, Southern Utah and New Mexico. I got them back just a few days before Christmas so I could wrap them up and give them to my mom. Here are the pictures:

They may look kind of small, but I figured that was the best way to show 16 pictures of these 32 people who had their pictures taken. What I'm not posting is the two pictures we took of my sisters' dogs w/the glasses on.

I developed these pictures and gave a copy to my youngest sister who started the whole thing, too. I then took the pictures I printed for my mom and scrapbooked them to match her original pages she had done about the sunglasses.

Let's just say that she LOVED it! I gave her the sunglasses first, and she and my sister almost died they were so happy. Then I said there was a second part to my mom's gift, and I opened the scrapbook pages for her to look at while I gave my sister her copies of the prints. They LOVED them. I knew they would, and their reactions didn't disappoint.

In any case, that made my Christmas thoroughly enjoyable. I still can't believe all 32 people kept the secret -- most of them for six weeks now. It was awesome.

My family all loved their gifts as well, but describing them would sound boring in comparison to the fun we had giving my mom hers. Becca wrapped up a gift that said it was to be opened last, and when we opened it there was a card that said, "The greatest gift of all is given to you by Christ: The gift of Eternal life." It was a great reminder to everyone in our family about the meaning of this special season!