Only 363 days until Christmas!!

I love Christmas - just in case anyone missed that memo!! In fact I love December. I am so blessed to have most of my family living really close to us and that we get to see them all often. I don't see my brother much and he lives fairly close but I guess we are both just too busy. Kind of weird though. We get to see Wayne's siblings almost every week, sometimes we skip a week of visiting for various reasons but we always see them at least once a month. It's nice to continue our relationship with them even as adults. It gets kind of hard sometimes because of the age difference in our kids but we make an effort and that's great.

Christmas was awesome this year - even though it was a bit different than previous. We were invited to Tyler and Karies in the morning to see what "Santa" had brought to the little girls. Syd looks so grown up with her new ipod! Savannah got an awesome little trike. Hopefully Ty and Karie will post pictures of it! Then we came home and waited for the rest of the kids to come by. The snow storm came in strong and overwhelming. It made for dangerous driving, I'm glad the kids all made it here safely. We ate, opened presented, talked and played. We had a great time. We gave Brandon the new Guitar Hero World Tour and he was kind enough to let everyone have a turn. Even Wayne sang which is pretty amazing in and of itself! Both sets of parents came to our house to visit this year (that was the different part). As hard as it is to transition to new traditions, I hope everyone had a great Christmas being with family. We missed Hayan this year, as she's in Korea with her parents. I hope she knows just how much we missed having her here with us. Maybe next year. Due to the crazy storm, Brandon and Jocelyn and Zach all stayed the night here and headed out the next day. Actually Zach stayed and spent the day with me. It was nice to have some good old fashioned mother/son time. He helped me "undecorate" the tree. We watched a movied and just chatted. It was nice to have some time with him, he's been so busy with school lately. It was a great Christmas at the Sexton house and I hope our family all feels the same. Tyler and Karie were so kind to share their little family Christmas with us. Thanks guys, you're awesome!

Congratulations Zach!!

Yeah, he did it! Zach graduated from WSU today with his bachelors of science in Microbiology. We are so proud of you Zach. It was especially nice to have his grandpa and grandma Larsen there to share in the joy. Jocelyn was the only sibling able to attend today, it was great to have her come and support her brother!
Grandpa Larsen graduated from Weber State, both Wayne and I graduated from Weber as well. We are not the school spirit kind of people but it was kind of nice to see Zach graduate from Weber State too. Hayan has been very supportive of Zach and his school and we are very grateful for her! We are happy to have her a part of our family. We know it takes a team to get through school. I am so grateful for Wayne! He has been so supportive of me while I've been back in school.
Way to go Zach!
Afterwards we had all the kids, Syd and Savannah and my mom and dad and we went to Famous Dave's for bbq. It was really good, but way too much food!

Our Christmas Party was a real "bang"

How do you create a Christmas party that will be a memory forever? Well we tried blowing up the prime-rib! I think we were successful. You see, the prime rib wasn't getting cooked, even after 4 hours, so with only 2 hours until the party, Wayne decided to crank the oven to 400 for an hour to "jump start" things. Well, after about 30 minutes he decided the rib needed just a little water and then we could take off for bowling while it finished cooking. It is such a beautiful prime rib by the way and we used our "old Ephraims" prime rib rub! Yummy! Back to the events of the night. So when Wayne added just a little bit of water, the pyrex pan he was cooking in exploded! Big huge bang! Glass everywhere. So much for the lovely prime rib. You can see it in the picture next to the dust pan. Yikes! In spite of our rough start we recovered pretty well I think. We hurried to the store and bought tenderloins, bacon wrapped them and grilled them up. Karie had made the funeral potatoes and Jocelyn made a salad. Hayan brought the rolls. It was a great dinner, just a little behind schedule and the evening kind of messed up bowling. We exchanged gifts with Zach and Hayan since Hayan is leaving for Korea on the 16th. We watched "Better off Dead" a classic! Kids had a good time I think. Wayne cleaned to oven on Sunday (auto clean), filled the house with smoke. Don't know if it was because this was the first time we had used the self clean on our new ovens or what, the oven really wasn't that dirty. After we got the glass cleaned up that is.