Christmas Festivities

Yeah, I forgot... NOAH TURNED 13 ON SATURDAY!! He is too little to be a teenager! He is the only one I remember being born.. Sorry Maizey and Jonah. But I still remember him being this chunky little baby, wearing jean overalls and his baseball caps, which he would not go anywhere without, and going to car shows with all the uncles on Saturday mornings in Mesa. He is a cute little guy, and he is still shorter than me, so I can still say that. ;)

December 23rd - 29th

This Sunday we had a lovely Christmas program, which was really neat. There were a lot of beautiful music numbers and such.. I think I also forgot to say that two weeks ago my mom and sisters and me and a few other women in the ward sang in church.. Little One.. it was good, but we were really quiet.
We also had a similar program in YW, but more focused on Joseph, Mary, the Shepherds, and the Wise Men. It's so amazing how you think you know the story of the nativity, but every year you learn something new. Christmas hasn't really been a favorite time of year for me for the past few years because 1. it's not what it used to be. 2. people celebrate it for the wrong reasons. 3. it's always still hot outside, so it's almost impossible to get into the Christmas spirit. and 4. this is the last year for all of my family to be together for Christmas. 5. I'm sick this year.
So I'll admit, I've been a grouch this season, but only because I don't want to have a super good time and then have next year suck, I know, it makes no sense, but sometimes that's just how I want to work. :P

Monday was Christmas Eve..
I was the driver for the goody drop offs.. we went to the Allemans and the Jensens, and they were both gone. Then we went to the Cluffs, and gave our stuff to Colton and Boyd... I hope it got to the rest of the family... haha! ;)
And we had the Severtson family party at our house this year. We had lots and lots of yummy food. And of course, I was so sick and I had a HUGE headache, and that is not the time to have one, my friends. There are always screaming kids running a muck. So I tried to take a nap in my room for a few minutes to see if that would help at all... it didn't. I couldn't even try to sleep because it was SO loud. It's better than being completely silent, I suppose. I got some earrings and a necklace, a $10 gift card to Amazon, $25 to iTunes, and other little stuff. I opened up Katie's present and there was a note saying, "I love you to the moon and back..." and underneath was A NASA SHIRT. It is seriously the coolest thing ever. It's just awesome.
It was nice to talk to all the family, though. I'm so thankful that they treat us like family, and nothing is awkward. :) All four sides are like that, which is such a blessing to everyone, since I know that not all blended families have that blessing. We're so fortunate. :)
After everyone left we got to open family presents! Kami got me these super comfy tube sock slipper things... I love them!! :) If my Christmas is already this good, and it's not even Christmas yet... geez.
It is hard to be a grump when you're surrounded with family. Good thing they saved me. :)

Now it's Christmas.. and I don't want to be all secluded and to myself, that's not what should happen. So I try to put on a smile, even though it's 6:45 in the morning and all the lights are on and my siblings are pestering me to finally get out of bed and downstairs. Which, I secretly love sometimes.. I act like they annoy me, but underneath Christmas really is such a wonderful time. :) So my family gets all the presents into 10 piles and we go around one by one and open them so we can all see what each other got. I got some more slippers, a new undershirt, a wallet, a 3 Wolf Moon t-shirt from Jen, and an iPhone 4! :) Nothing too crazy, but I like it that way. Plus, for some reason, I was more excited for Garrett's gifts. He got a guitar AND an archery bow and arrows!! Dude. I have a feeling that we're going to share. ;) My parents also got me a guitar but they decided that they didn't want to give it to me, and I'd have to pay for it... and I think I might want to buy it off of them.. But I'm still deciding.
After that was all taken care of, I went to go see Les Miserables with Lauren, Ryan, and Sam. Our first showing was sold out, so we had to wait another hour or so. It was a lot of waiting in line... we were all sick, actually. So we saw the movie, and it was pretty good. There was quite a bit of swearing and some inappropriate material which really bugged me, because I didn't think it was going to be like that? I've seen movie renditions and read a bit of the book, but I'd never seen the play, so the singing throughout the ENTIRE movie kind of threw me off. I guess I had such HIGH expectations for the movie... I thought I'd cry for sure, and I didn't.. and I don't know. It didn't captivate me all that much. Lately movies have been doing that for me. Like, I'd rather not watch new movies... I don't feel like they've taken me anywhere or whatnot, if that even makes sense. But I LOVE old movies and TV shows. I'm an old soul, and I like old things. Recently like ANY bad thing in a movie makes me not like the movie as a whole, and it's really hard to come by a movie that has none of that..
After the movie, I felt guilty because my mom wanted to go see it with me or as a family, and plus it being the last time my family would be together for Christmas.... I just wanted to go home. Plus I was getting more sick as the night progressed. So I went home, and they drove away... and my garage door opener would NOT work. The front door was locked, too... and no one was home. My family decided to visit my grandparents... GREAT. NOW I feel really guilty!! After trying every possible way to get inside besides breaking a window, I called my mom.. and they wouldn't be back for a long time. So she said to call the Cluffs... oh this is so embarrassing.. But I deserve it. I should have been with my family.. :( So I called them up, my phone battery is dying.. and Colton answers, I explain my whole story, and in the background I can hear them all confused, and then they say they'll come pick me up, but I can hear hesitation in their voices. GREAT. They don't want me over there and it's cold outside and I am going to die from this cough. So about 10 minutes later, they come and get me. But you know I'm sitting outside on the porch bench, and they look really confused to see me out of the house.. apparently Colton told them that I was by myself and lonely on Christmas and wanted to hang out with them. He completely left out the whole locked-out-of-my-house part... when I told them that, they were like OHHHH! Yeah... way to go Colton. So I go over there, and it was kind of weird interrupting someone else's Christmas, but I know they didn't mind. So we played games and just talked and such. Their family is really cool with their gifts, the kids MAKE each other gifts, which I think is so neat!! I should bring that up with my family.
But yeah, really weird spending Christmas with friends rather than family... but I guess I'll be doing that in a few years anyways on my mission. :)

The rest of the week we spent up at my grandparent's cabin. It was the first time I had actually seen snow in about a decade, but the first time I had ever seen it fall from the sky. At first I was really anxious and nervous, because I thought I'd freeze to death. Like I was legitimately afraid of it. So when it started to fall from the sky while we were driving, you'd think I was seeing ghosts fall from the sky.. I was silent and just sitting there with my eyes and mouth wide open in disbelief. It was so different from what I thought it was going to be like. I thought it was so ugly. Haha! It snowed all day, and the moonlight reflected off of it so you could still see outside, even when it was dark.. it was soooo weird!! I went out and touched it, and ran back inside.. IT WAS LIKE COLD POWDERED SUGAR. I thought it was like heavy and icy! Not light and puffy.. So the next day, I gathered random snow gear and went out and played in it. Kinda. I couldn't feel my fingers at all... but I went sledding.. And IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! I really hated being cold, but I went down 2 or 3 times! It is hard to walk in, so I got tired.. but I guess having the proper clothing made it alright. My first experience when I was 7, I was wearing bell bottom jeans and a light knitted sweater with knitted mittens... yeah. That didn't fly. But here I am, 17 now first venturing out into the snow looking like I was about to go on an Arctic tundra expedition with all of the layers.... and I had fun. I don't like to admit it because then I was wrong.. ;) I checked the weather a few times... it was always warmer in Anchorage!! What is this? This is still Arizona!!
The whole week I drank chocolate coconut hot chocolate and I got better and watched a whole bunch of murder mystery shows on Netflix and played a whole bunch of card games. It was fun. Waaaay better than my last times at the cabin.

We went home and normally, I hate the drive from Rye to Mesa. It's so ugly and brown and nothing pretty is there. This time, for whatever reason. I was in such a happy mood driving home, it made EVERYTHING beautiful! The whole 2 hour drive home, my head was turned towards the window and I was literally in awe of how beautiful Arizona is.. it went from high and snow covered mountains, to red rock peeking through the  cliffs and pine trees, to rolling yellow hills with dotted circular bushes, to mountains that reminded me of Scotland and Australia, to fields and hills lined with cactus, and then to my absolute favorite cliffs alongside the river... nothing was ugly this time. While driving through Rye, it was at first this ugly little "town" with a cool broken bike yard in the middle of these yellow rolling hills, but there was a sign that someone wrote on the side of the fence, "JESUS IS THE REASON I AM", and suddenly, it became this lovely place which softened my heart.. I don't know, but then everything else became so gorgeous.. This little "town" had found a way to send out the gospel to all of the travelers going to Payson in the smallest way possible. It was so great.

Saturday night we played Just Dance 4 and I watched Psycho. And it was AWESOME.