Christmas Eve we went to my parent’s home. It is always tradition, ever since I was little, for the family to act out the Christmas Story. Now the grandkids do it and the adults watch. It’s always VERY entertaining!!

Then we opened gifts… These are gifts between my parents and grandkids, my siblings and I, etc… Every year my dad gives my mom a super “useful” gift, such as a washboard, a muffin tin with corn shaped muffins, etc… This year his gifts were…

My mom was thrilled, lemme tell ya…

I gave my parents BYU stadium seats. They attend most of my kid’s basketball or football games and those bl

eachers get uncomfortable. Funny story about stadium seat… My grandma (Dad’s mom) was at my dad’s basketball game and as she was leaving down the bleachers she thought a woman pushed her. So she turned around and whacked her with her stadium seat!!! I love it!!!

That night Santa came!!! Livie left this letter for Santa…

She promptly made this for me:

Ya know… I remember when Santa brought Alec and Tristan matching Blue’s Clues “Thinking Chairs…” Cute.

We went to church Christmas morning. Sei had been asked to play the prelude music for about 15 minutes. He played so beautifully. I love him.

My fave gift I received… Probably my Kindle Fire from Seiuli … I love the purse my sister surprised me with as well! But my fave thing was surprising Seiuli with Bowflex adjustable dumb bells. Amazon.com delivered them to the house and so the box weighed over 100 lbs. Sei had to carry the box in with a blanket over it so he couldn’t see what the picture on the side was. He was so confused as to what I could have bought him that weighed that much!! I was so excited to give them to him because I knew he wanted them, but would never buy them for himself. I scored them at a waaaay cheaper price than they are listed for now. Yay! I love surprising my husband!

It was a wonderful Christmas. I love being with my family. And I know Christmas isn’t about gifts, but I LOVE giving them!! It’s fun to me and makes me happy. I am thankful for any excuse to spoil my family!!!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!!!!

I love the Christmas season. Although I think most people are “good” people all year round, the Christmas season seems to bring out the “good” more often. I wanted to share a cool opportunity with you presented by the Feed it Forward Giving Center. Thru the month of December Restaurant.com is letting you send $10 Restaurant.com Gift Certificates to anyone you would like! Loved ones, friends, neighbors, etc…  You can give up to 40 $10 Restaurant.com Gift Certificates every day! What an awesome way to spread the Christmas cheer!!

I already love Restaurant.com anyway. I buy gift certificates thru them all the time. But this is just such a sweet opportunity! And it’s FREE!!! All you need to do is create an account, choose how you want to connect (Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, or just enter emails…) and then send out your FREE gift certificates via email. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity!

Sei got the part time job I mentioned a few posts ago.  It’s been such a blessing. He works between 20 and 30 hours a week writing bids for a contracting company that does things like asbestos abatement and stuff… Idk- I read that on their website. haha But he is enjoying and likes the people he’s working with. They pay him and treat him well. He started the first week of Oct. We- obviously- have a lot of lawyer bills to pay, etc…, but we decided that the 1st 2 months we were rewarding ourselves for getting thru a crappy 2009. So, for Christmas I bought- WITH CASH!!- a new washer and dryer. This is our 1st NEW washer and dryer in our marriage.  I didn’t go all crazy. Just bought a basic Samsung front loader and dryer. And I bought them while they were on sale and used a 10% off coupon. I was feelin’ cool! And I LOVE my new appliances!!! The washer washes HUGE loads- which is the only kind of load I know. And dries them so well. The dryer senses how wet the clothes are and only dries til they are dry. So cool. They both play a little song for me when they are done. After 15 years of doing laundry for other people I think I deserve a new, awesome set. Not only that, but I was able to give my other washer and dryer to my brother and sister-in-law who were thrilled to not have to walk to their apartment laundry room anymore!! YAY!

For Seiul’s Christmas present he bought our very first NEW television. All of the tvs in our home are probably 10 years old and we got them all off of Craigslist.  I know I said we were getting rid of cable to save money, but when we called to get it cut down to just the basic channels, they discounted our cable sooo much that we are only paying $10 more a month for almost all the channels we already had as we would be paying for 5 basic channels. Nice.  We get to save $40 a month, but still have cable. What’s funny is with Sei’s new job, we never watch tv anymore. haha  Anyway, now thanks to Best Buy’s great Black Friday deal, Sei and the boys are watching Sports Center on this:

I’m not writing this post to brag at all. I know people have been praying for us to get a break and FINALLY we are. This job is such a blessing because now we can pay ALL our bills without “creative bill paying”… as I like to call it. Thank you so much to those that prayed for us throughout the last 2 years. We have had such financial and emotional turmoil and it’s so nice to get a breather. Obviously we are still FAR, FAR, FAR from rich, but making ends meet is nice change. And now, it’s down to business. We will be paying extra on our lawyer bills, etc… to get out of this hole faster. But it was fun to spend some on things we never could buy ourselves before without getting in to more debt.

We are also putting money away to celebrate our 10th anniversary a few months late. Sept. 2011 will be 10 years, but in the summer of 2012 we are hoping to take a trip to Hawaii. We looked at Royal Caribbean cruises because we went on one for our belated honeymoon back in 2002. We LOVED IT- it was amazing. Cruises are the way to go if you want to get the most for your money.  But I really want to go to Hawaii, so the saving begins!! I am finally going to learn to surf, buy all the sandals I want and probably come home totally depressed!! Yay! And if we don’t do it in 2012, then we’ll do it in 2013. I’m excited.

Anyway, that’s all. I just want to say THANK YOU for all the prayers and support. We’re finally getting close enough to the lite at the end of the tunnel that we can feel it’s warmth.

I’m writing this with a fuzzy, flu-head, so I hope it makes sense. It’s October already. OCTOBER. Christmas is in less than 3 months. I’m freakin’ out big time here. I have 5 kids to buy for that will be here, plus my 2 step-daughters who won’t be with us this year, extended family members, teachers… I’m starting to hyperventilate. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to save money, although this year with all the lawyers fees we’ve had it’s been next to impossible. I’ve been trying to come up with cheap gift ideas. Or maybe one BIG gift for the kids rather than a bunch of little ones. Sei and I actually talked about building a skate ramp. That’d be rad. And since we have so many kids to buy for it’d probably be cheaper to go that route.

I just hate the stress of the holidays because it overshadows what it’s all about. Celebrating our Savior’s birth shouldn’t stress us out or force us into major financial crisis. I had a friend who one year just wanted her son to have a great Christmas so she took out one of those small payday loans. At the time that was her answer. My answer so far has been to start picking up things now. If I see something on sale I try to buy it and put it away. My only problem there is that I usually end up with waaaaay too much because I forget what I’ve purchased. I’m also trying to stick a little from each paycheck into savings so we have a little to work with. I have to remember that heating costs will be going up- thankfully I’m in Texas so they aren’t that bad. But before that happens – like most of Oct. and Nov.- we basically don’t use our heat or a/c. I don’t think the a/c has clicked on all week. We should take advantage of that and put the money we usually use towards heat or a/c towards Christmas instead. I need to learn to be more disciplined.

What are your best holiday savings tips? Or savings tips in general??