Cheryl and William: Melding Christmas Traditions

Christmas 2007 was our first Christmas together as a married couple and so we melded some of our favorite Christmas traditions from each side of the family.

CHERYL:
Every year we visit the lights at Temple Square. This year was no exception and we went with William's brother and sister-in-law, Chris and Karen. It truly is such a beautiful to walk around and see the temple and all of the lights celebrating our Savior's birth. These were my two favorite photos of the ones we took.

You can see the rest of the photos from our evening in the slide show below.

WILLIAM:

William and his brothers have a tradition of spending more time on the wrapping of the gift than the gift itself. In a previous year, Chris gave William this giant block of duct tape that took William 2 hours to unwrap to find a gift card. Needless to say, William was going to give a unique gift back to Chris. I must say that I DID NOT ENDORSE this gift giving method but I was overruled as it is William's brother. Chris and Karen are expecting a baby boy in May so William thought that it would be great to "inaugurate" them into parenthood early with his gift. William took a "gift card" and placed it in a ziplock bag and then placed it inside of a clean baby diaper. I was ok with the gift up to this point but that wasn't good enough for William. He thought it needed to be messy and so he placed a container of CHOCOLATE PUDDING into the diaper! You should have seen William's face at the grocery store when he made this "revelation" about how to construct this "perfect" gift- truly, so excited.

Here is William in the construction process of the gift- he could not stop smiling and talking about how "awesome" his gift was.

The "masterful" gift in all its glory

And the final, unsuspectful looking product.

And let me tell you that we watched Chris open up the gift in person and he had this look of pure disgust as he peeked in the diaper, immediately closed it and said "Ewww- Bill!" Here is Chris opening the gift once he regained his composure.

The whole night, Chris kept telling William what a "great" job he did of coming up with such a clever way to wrap the gift. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then William should be very pleased since Chris used this same idea (not the same gift) on Karen's brother and sister-in-law who are also expecting. I'm just slightly concerned about what the retaliation will be next year from Chris . . . . .

CHERYL:

My family has a longstanding tradition of every Christmas Eve of going to a movie and then out to dinner. We learned many years ago that very few places are open on Christmas Eve- except Village Inn. So, this year the tradition continued with William. My mom, Sarah, William, and I all went and saw "Rush Hour 3" at the dollar movies (which is hilarious- Chris Tucker just cracks me up- I just wish I could see more outtakes of their stunt training sessions) and then went to Village Inn.

WILLIAM:

Every Christmas Eve, William's family drives around and looks at neighborhood Christmas lights. Since William's parents were in Russia for the holidays, we greatly missed them, but kept the tradition alive. William, Sarah and I all drove around the surrounding neighborhoods checking out the Christmas lights. Here are a few of our favorite photos.

Check out the projection screen!

And this was the most elaborately decorated house we saw that night

At the conclusion of our driving tour, William thought that the best Christmas lights were the ones in my neighborhood, New Haven and Shennandoah, the adjoining neighborhood, but we were happy to find some of the gems from the other neighborhoods.

CHERYL:

Our family stocking stand- and look- there's even one for William!

Christmas for the Stults household has gotten to have a later start time as we have gotten older.

My dad is a physician and so he has to go into the hospital for sometime every Christmas to take care of some of his patients. When we were little, we would wake up really early and do presents before he went to work. As we got older, we made the ruling that we valued our sleep time more and so we don't open presents until he gets home from work, sometimes at 1 pm or another time in the afternoon. This is a fairly foreign concept to William because even as adults, his family still got up pretty early. Since it was later the the day, William and I opted to appear in regular clothes and not our pajamas- but my sisters maintained the pajama tradition.

Sarah with her gifts and I love the wrapping job on the "unique" gift.

Cynthia with her gifts.

William's gifts-

One of them being this good looking tie (nice choice Mom and Dad!)

Me with my gifts- and one of them I'm wearing . . . . new glasses!

WILLIAM:

One of William's family's traditions is to make Christmas goodies. And so William himself made some for us! Butterscotch crunchies and white chocolate brownie bars- mmm soo good! And my mom and sisters were truly impressed by William's cooking skills as he made them all by himself.

CHERYL:

My family does fondue every year around Christmas time, and this year we had it on Christmas day. It is so much fun to dip foods into the cheese and tomato sauce fondues.

And since my dad is a doctor, his patients are always being so generous and giving us fruit baskets. This was one of the most unique fruit creations I've seen!