Christmas!

We had our own Christmas Eve on December 23rd. Yes, that is our little tree. Every year I think about getting a big one but this little one just works so nice in our smaller space I think I'll cave next year though when Max is coming up on three and can help(?) me decorate.
We hopped in the car and took the 5 min drive to the Newport Beach Temple to see the Nativity up close.Opened presents at home on the 24th morning. This was the first one Max opened from his Great Grandma Savage, he could've just played with the monster truck all morning and been fine!
He also received two new Little People or "people" sets from Santa, and now a month later not a day has gone by where we haven't pulled them out and set them up first thing in the morning. Santa made a great choice!
We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning with Grandma and Grandpa White and the rest of the family. Max loved opening his stocking and finding the Toy Story guys! With Grandma and Aunt Meridith.
Aunt JessicaDaddy helped him open gifts.He loves Lightning McQueen and calls all the cars, "Big Cars!" We finally got him some Cars for Christmas and his Grandma got him a Cars mat to play with them on.We headed to UTAH on the 26th and were back by New Years Eve. I took more pictures but will just post a couple. It was a successful trip, I checked out Jungle Book at the library and Max must've watched it about 6 or 7 times. We stayed in St. George one night on the way up. Luckily Max slept in the pack n' play. We loved seeing all the cousins, Aunts and Uncles and of course Grandma and Grandpa Wright. We visited the Springville Art Museum. The Snow was fun too, we got two storms while we were there and pulled out our winter driving skills. On the way home we met up with my brother who had taken the kids down to St. George while his wife recovered from surgery.

With Grandma and Grandpa Wright, they gave him this Bus the first day we were there and Max slept with it every night.
Love my Mountains!

It was fun celebrating Max's 2nd Christmas. It was nice that we could leave the presents out and he didn't realize that there were toys beneath the wrapping paper. I'm sure this won't be the case next year. In fact, a few days into the New Year he found a Christmas present that I had decided to save for his birthday, but having just been through all the unwrapping he knew just what to do and opened it right up! Then as Jared was getting new books for the quarter that would come from the UPS man in boxes Max would see them and say, "open! open! big cars! choo-choo! people!". We had a couple FHE's about the nativity and baby Jesus and I really think he began to understand. We tried to explain who Santa was but he kept thinking he was a dwarf from Snow White. Just after Thanksgiving he saw some parts from Snow White, he loved the dwarfs singing "dig dig dig" and "hi-ho". So then when he saw Santa he would say "Adu" which for some weird reason is Max's word for Snow White or whenever he sees a princess really.