It all started when I burned the bacon...

Our first Christmas Day together was a frenzy of plans falling through and unexpected goings on!

...and it all started when I burned the bacon for our Christmas morning breakfast. The whole morning was going so smoothly! We woke up in the living room, my brother, Dirk, called, and then we opened all our gifts from our wonderful families and friends!

Then came breakfast. It was a little late in the morning, and we knew we should be going to our ward dinner soon, but we wanted a special breakfast anyway. Then I burned the bacon. Not all of it, but most of it. So Drew ate the burnt pieces. : ) Then I accidentally forgot to start scrambling the eggs when I put them in the pan, so Drew had an omelet instead. Oops! Breakfast still turned out okay with bacon, eggs, toast, and orange juice.

After breakfast we got a call from Elder Barron! Luckily he was able to call us (we're family!) after his call home. Yay! He sounded great!

Then we got ready for the day. We were already super late for a ward Christmas dinner we knew nothing about, so we hurried out of the apartment sporting our new clothing from Kelsey.

When we got the clubhouse for "dinner", we didn't know what we'd be walking into. Apparently, we were completely out of the loop for this shindig: there were 3 couples sitting at a table playing games, their dinner plates were scraped of food and piled in the kitchen, and we were completely embarrassed. We stayed for a little bit, watched them play their game of Clue and then started a game of Apples to Apples with them. Eventually we found out that there was a sign-up that went around at church for those who wanted to participate in this dinner by bringing a dish. Being in Primary, we didn't get any of the announcements, as usual... we're on the other side of the building. We were bummed.

When we went home again, Drew and I didn't know what we were going to do with our time. We didn't get the Christmas dinner we were looking forward to and we were discouraged. Correction: I was discouraged. We watched one of our Christmas Classics, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, while we figured out what to do. We knew one thing: we were hungry!

Unfortunately, we hadn't been grocery shopping since we believed we'd be eating with the ward and didn't have anything in the apartment except potatoes and popsicles: not exactly a Christmas feast. We decided to drive around to see if there were any restaurants open... I began to cry and miss home more than ever. This was not what Christmas was supposed to be like! I missed my parents' non-traditional traditions, their usual Christmas activities, and a nice, big, filling, HOME MADE dinner. I was so grumpy and sad. We drove all over Rexburg and nothing was open. Of course not.

Our friend, Tyler Larson, texted Drew and told him we should join his family again for the evening (if you read below, we were with his family in Idaho Falls for Christmas Eve). They had already eaten, though, so we still needed to find food. We headed toward Denny's in Idaho Falls, but once we got close, we just went to Tyler's instead.

As we arrived, the Larsons were getting out their leftovers for a second round of food! THE HEAVENS OPENED! : ) We ate a big dinner with all the fixin's: ham, turkey, funeral potatoes, pomegranate salad, pistachio salad, and poppy seed salad! YUM! Drew even had some pumpkin pie (his favorite)!

That night Drew played nothing but video games all night with Tyler and I wrote down recipes from Sister Larson's cookbooks while watching Home Alone with the family. We are so thankful for the Larsons in our lives!

We got home late and went straight to bed in preparation for work the next morning. Our first Christmas will be one we always remember...