A Californian Christmas-Part 2: Christmas Day

Christmas day started early, waking up at 6:30am.  We had orange rolls for breakfast, which is a tradition in the Fletcher family.  Another tradition is that the youngest heads into the family room first, so since Kylie was the youngest, we headed in first.  Everyone then looked through their stockings.

Then we all opened presents, took naps, played games, watched movies and relaxed the rest of the day! It was a great day and Kylie had a lot of fun!

Favorite picture from Christmas.

Kylie would not hold still!

Becky!

Looking at presents!

Scott & Andrew

Best picture of Kylie having a blast with the wrapping paper.

A Californian Christmas Part 1

We had fun hanging out with the Fletcher family for Christmas down in California.  There's a lot that went on, so I'm going to separate them into different posts or else this would be the longest post in history.  We'll start with the first few days before Christmas day.

We left Sunday, the 22nd at 7:00pm.  It was an hour later than what we had planned on, but we were driving through the night no matter what.  We only had to stop once for Vegas and Kylie did great! She slept pretty much the whole time except for the last 45 minutes.  That was a little bit of a bummer because we were tired, but she was awake.  We got in at 4:00am.  Scott's mom was nice and took care of Kylie so we could get at least a few hours of sleep.  Scott had some Christmas shopping to do still (he was busy working a lot before we left), so we headed to Wal-Mart.  Scott wanted to do some shopping without me there, so our niece Nikki and I went and saw the movie Frozen.  It was such a cute movie!  After that we ate at Burger Boss, which is basically like Smashburger here in Utah.  Then we headed down to see the lights at Mission Inn.  It was crowded and we didn't go inside the inn because the line was ridiculous, but it was fun to walk around.  It did humor me how people in California thought 50 degree weather was freezing! I was wearing a skirt and just a sweater and totally fine, but it made me laugh to hear others talk about bundling up and wearing their heaviest winter coat.  Utah weather has definitely got me used to the cold.

We spent Christmas Eve relaxing and playing games.  There was a Christmas program and we introduced Scott's family to the song "Six White Boomers".  Everyone got their own mug and we all had hot chocolate and then we went to bed in anticipation for Christmas the next day.

Unexpected Christmas Present

On December 16th, I was leaving work and as I was driving up the hill, my car was hardly moving no matter how much I pressed on the gas.  Luckily it wasn't busy with cars behind me and I pulled off to the side of the road.  The car wouldn't move, so I called Scott and he came and picked me up.  Most likely the transmission died and that is an expensive fix. It wasn't worth it to fix it, so we had a junk yard company come and tow it and we got $300 for it. 

We started looking at cars right away.  We were leaving for California soon and although Scott's car would make it, we didn't want to take it if we could find a new car to take down.  Way before we even needed a new car, we looked at ones we would want to get when the time came.  The Honda CR-V was what we wanted because it was a small SUV giving more space, but not as large.  We went to a dealership first, but they hardly had any CR-V's for us to look at and didn't really do a good job at trying to sell us a car.  We looked on KSL ads every day and decided to expand our search by looking at different types of small SUV's.  

We found this great BMW for about $9,000 from a private seller.  We went to look at it and there really was nothing wrong with the car.  Everything looked pretty fantastic actually.  We ended up saying no to it.  Scott told me that when looking at cars, I need to make sure that I can see myself driving the car.  It has to fit my personality and this BMW just didn't seem to fit.

We kept looking and looking and found another one online that was at a dealership.  We were actually on our way to Wal-Mart to do some shopping when Scott called the dealership and we headed there instead!  We found a 2007 Chrysler Pacifica.  It had about 83,000 miles on it, which worked great with my under 100,000 miles expectation.  The car just seemed to fit us and we took it!  Our budget was $10,000 and we settled on $10,350.  Scott & I don't want to have to make any car payments as I am going to be done teaching and we just don't need that extra bill added on to what we already have.

It is such a blessing how everything worked out.  The car fits us, all our expectations were met and we got it in time to drive it down to California.  This was definitely an unexpected and large Christmas present.  We love it!

Scott put on this cute bow and surprised me with it Christmas day. :)

McKown Christmas Dinner

On December 18th, we had a Christmas dinner with my side of the family since almost everyone would be somewhere different.  Only my mom and Aaron would be in Utah.  We had ham, scalloped potatoes, vegetables, rolls and dessert.  The dinner turned out really well.  We ate first and then did activities after.  My mom brought the train we had when we were kids and set that up in our entry way.  Taren & Caden loved playing with it.  We then set up Christmas movies in the family room and Just Dance on the Wii downstairs.  It was nice that there was an activity in different rooms, so people could do what they wanted.  The most popular activity was playing Just Dance.  It was a lot of fun and pretty hilarious watching everyone dance.

I made these cute fruit Santa hats. Thanks pinterest.

Spread of food!

I made these scalloped potatoes by scratch. Thanks again pinterest for a good recipe!

Yummy ham provided by Brianna & Kyle.

12 Days of Christmas Technology.

Cousins playing!

Playing Just Dance! I'm not sure why I'm not in the same position as everyone else.

Kylie in her Christmas outfit.

The boys did so much better dancing to the One Direction song then the girls. Go figure.

Becoming Friends

Ever since we brought Kylie home from the hospital, out cat Maddie has kept her distance.  It makes sense in the fact that Maddie had all our attention before and now has to share.  She got a little territorial and would mark the house by peeing a little on the couch.  When Kylie was crying a lot, Maddie would meow and come up to see what was wrong.  She would leave the room pretty quickly, but it was cute to see that our cat was concerned about our daughter.

Slowly, Maddie has allowed Kylie to get closer to her.  On a good day, she'll even let Kylie pet her.  I hope one day they'll become good friends.

4 Months!

This post about Kylie's 4 month is a little late.  She turned 4 months on December 11th.  She'll be 5 months here soon! Time sure is flying by and my baby is getting bigger every day.  At her 4 month check up at the doctor's, Kylie loved playing with the tissue paper on the table. She had a blast tearing the paper up.  Since then we've been giving  Kylie paper to play with often.  I have some great pictures over Christmas of her playing with the wrapping paper.

 Some other facts about Kylie at 4 months:

• When it comes to textures, she loves things that crinkle (paper) and things that are soft.  She'll take her blanket and stroke it against her cheek.
• Kylie likes to jump a lot now.  She really started jumping during Christmas vacation in California.
• Attention is one thing she can't get enough of.  Whenever someone smiles at her, her face just lights up.
• Kylie will always try to sit up when she is laying on the ground.  She likes to sit in her bumbo chair too.
• Kylie is a great sleeper now! She takes cat naps during the day, but will sleep wonderfully at night. It has been a relief to finally get some rest at night.
• She weighed 13.6 lbs at her appointment, so she is in the 25% for weight. For height, she is 70% and still a tiny head with only 15%.