Christmas 2025

As has become our norm, we decorated for Christmas at the beginning of November. I love having the house decorated for longer.

Precious Moments Nativity - mom gave us a piece each year for several years

Christmas Countdown

Family Room Tree

Nutcrackers & Stockings

Living Room Tatted Ornament Tree

Baylie and Bella Howe helped kids with their coloring pages at the Christmas Tree Lighting.

April and I froze our buns off, but had a great time.

I designed a t-shirt. I'm quite proud of it!

We took Elder Carter and Elder Peery to Costco for hot dogs and then to drive through the Living Nativity at Union Methodist Church. The kids had a mutual activity so it was just us and the elders.

Our traditional Christmas jammies around the tree photo. 

Jalen helped me harvest mistletoe that we then shared with friends. I love this new tradition. We've done it for three or four years now.

David and I joined Jalen on a Colearn field trip. This has become too expensive, but since it was part of a field trip, it was more affordable. The lights were beautiful this year so I was glad we didn't miss it. 

 

Baylie was working so it was some two-on-one time with Jalen.

Proposing to a monkey.

Channeling their inner Dr. Who.

So many cool lights.

We had another missionary Costco outing - this time followed by a drive through the lights at Saluda Shoals. Baylie was working the lights this night.

There are way more lights at Saluda Shoals than in Spanish Fork.

I made Rosca de Reyes for co-op.

And later made latkes and sufganiyot for our annual Hannukah celebration with Yasmin and kids. This year it was just Jackson. I hear Trader Joe's has good frozen latkes so I'll probably try that next year because they are so tricky to make.

Followed by a game of dreidel. I love this annual tradition.

Another tradition I love is our Soup and Singing night. We always manage to fit a pretty good crowd into our little home. We have such wonderful friends and neighbors.

Christmas is full of traditions for our family. Gingerbread houses is another favorite, especially since I started making the gingerbread myself. Homemade is so much better.

I even made one this year. Usually I just watch.

We love sharing this tradition with the neighbors.

The cute Evert kids helped set out the luminarios.

We had the Everts and missionaries back over for Christmas Eve dinner. The kids tackled Jalen.

Yummy Christmas dinner! We love having guests!

It's especially fun having little people to act out the nativity.

As always, it was a wonderful Christmas full of gifts. We have always been blessed to have good Christmases even in our limited financial situation. 

Baylie got a laptop from us and from Grammy and Grandad. It was a Christmas/graduation present.

Jalen was as excited about deoderant and he was the Lego set. He loves to smell nice!

He was also excited about his BYU blanket.

And Ohtani jersey.

Once all the gifts were opened, the kids were pooped! Good thing they have fancy blankets!

I had to throw in videos of some interesting musical gifts.

Thanksgiving 2025

We don't usually travel over Thanksgiving because it's so hard to fly standby. We decided to make an exception because the whole family was going to be together and Camden was coming home from his mission in Poland. The flights were wide open so we decided to go for it. I have no memory of what day what happened so it's all getting lumped together.

We made both our flights without a hitch and even had time to stop for Garrett's popcorn in Chicago.

We arrived in Utah to the airport cheerfully decorated for Christmas!

One of our first Provo stops was to the creamery for ice cream and cheese curds - two of our favorite things. We went with Grammy & Grandad - two more of our favorite things.

The next morning we went to the Orem Temple to do baptisms with Grammy and Grandad. 

Grandad, Grammy, Baylie, Jalen, Me, David

After the temple, we headed to the airport to greet Camden on his return from a two-year mission to Poland. His mission seemed to take FOREVER.  His getting out of the airport was almost as long. Apparently immigration had a lot of questions for him and another one of the elders, thinking they may be Russian spies.

Kolton, Erik, Shanelle, Asher, Baylie, David, Jalen, Cameron, Grammy, and Grandad

But he finally made it!!

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at Chubby's. The former Elder Noah Evans met us. We love him so much and it was great to see him.

Sometime over the weekend the kids played some backyard football.

And more football!

Asher, David, Dave, Erik, Clark, Lauryn, Jalen, Baylie, Camden, Clara
Cameron, Kolton, two of Kolton's friends

Back and Grammy and Grandad,s Erik and David helped hang up new lights. The colors can be changed for different holidays so you never have to take them down. Such a cool idea.

A little help from Shanelle.

Finished!

Grandad is in his welding phase and he made this amazing turkey.

Baylie was excited to meet up with her besties Natalie and Kaitlyn. They joined us for the big family Thanksgiving dinner.

We met at a church, which reminded me of my childhood when all the Bayleses would get together in Blanding. Lots of food and family.

Dave, Tiffani, friend, Hailey, Di, Clark, Jonny

David, Erik, Shanelle, Shanelle's sister, Shanelle's nephew

Camden, Cameron, Kolton, friend

Clark has always been a big eater!

so has Erik

We played a really fun dice game and David won $81!!

We also pulled in some couches and watched BYU basketball.

Clark's family always plays jungle ball. I'm not sure exactly how it's played, but it's wild and crazy!

Somewhere during the holiday, Tiff took the kids to Park City. They love hanging out with the "fun mom."

During the BYU football game (we didn't have tickets, but Dad and Tiff's family went), we had a fun visit from Elder Chase Carter's parents. They were so nice and it was great to meet them. It was so sweet of them to make the trip. They were generous and gave us a Walmart giftcard because we feed their son all the time.

One of the evenings we went to see the lights in Spanish Fork. We pulled a big trailer for all the kids to ride in. 

I rode in the truck with Grammy, Clark and Di.

Dave, Grammy, Grandad, Lauryn, Asher, Camden, Shanelle, Clara, Baylie, Jalen, Camden, Bea, David, Tyler, Will, Ashley, Clark, Simon, Rosie, Me   

And just like that, it was time to go back home. Sadly, there was a massive storm in Chicago, an Airbus maintenance issue, and effects from a government shut down. Our way back was not smooth. We had to leave before Camden's homecoming meeting. 

We ended up flying to Houston. We got bumped to Columbia and tried for Charlotte. Only two of us could make it so David and Baylie got on because they had work and school. Jalen and I ended up flying to Charleston. Unfortunately our car was in Columbia.

We rented cars in Charlotte and Charleston and drove to get our car in Columbia. Baylie and David got a cool Jeep - Baylie's dream car.

Jalen and I rented an ordinary car with a flat tire. It made for an interesting and slightly scary ride home.

It was a crazy trip, but everyone made it home safely and in time for work and school. It was totally worth it and we were grateful to spend so much time with family.