Christmas Break!

  We had a pretty eventful Christmas break this year.  This year was supposed to be Christmas at the Sutherland's house, but I only had Christmas day off from work, so I couldn't spend Christmas there.  Caitlin and I went down to San Diego the weekend before Christmas and I drove back to Arizona on Sunday to be back at work on Monday.  Caitlin stayed in San Diego, enjoyed Christmas there, drove with her family to Utah for her cousin Greg's wedding, then on the way back from Utah her family stopped at the Las Vegas airport and she flew back to Arizona.
  I'll start some pictures from December 1st.  Caitlin, my mom, and I decorated the Christmas tree and the tree looked pretty good!

Me wearing my cool sweat pants that are pulled up a bit.

Caitlin admiring the tree

This is what my dad likes to do during the tree decorating.

    On December 19th before we drove to San Diego, we opened a few presents that we got for each other and that my parents got for Caitlin since she was going to be in San Diego for Christmas day.  It was pretty fun to open presents early!  Caitlin knew what all of her presents were though!  Well, all but one - she didn't know that the jewelry stand was a jewelry stand thing.  I'm not sure what it's called.  The present opening started with a snowball fight!  My mom bought soft "snowballs" from the Hallmark store for each of the families in our family to have snowball fights with.  It was a lot of fun!

Caitlin throwing a snowball.  My dad went up to the second story and was attacking from above.

Caitlin with her jewelry thing.

Me opening up a gift.  It was an awesome flannel shirt!

Caitlin with some presents to unwrap.  It's a cupcake cookbook and the complete set of the Magic School Bus.

Caitlin looking through the cupcake cookbook.

Caitlin was pretty excited to open her iPad Mini that we got at the Thanksgiving Black Friday sale.

Glued to her iPad.

The view from the second story.

 Caitlin and I drove down to San Diego the next morning.  We had a ton of fun there.  I ate tons of cookies, like tons!  Caitlin and I ran 8 miles with Tricia and her friend Jen.  It was the farthest I have ever gone!  I felt good.  Then later that night we went down Christmas Card Lane which was pretty awesome.  Here are some pictures.

Sponge Bob

Spiderman!

Caitlin and Cody being funny in the car.

Busy street

  While I was there I got to open my Christmas gifts!  I got a new skateboard, a couple shirts, the Man of Steel movie, the Nokia Lumia 925, and a Fart Machine!  It was really fun.  It was too bad that I couldn't stay for Christmas though.  It was a lot of fun to be with Caitlin's family, even for a short time.
  Caitlin stayed in San Diego and I came back to Arizona because I had to work.  On Monday, I went to the Gammage theatre with my parents and watched Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols.  It was fun because it was a Christmas play around Christmas time and when Caitlin and I were dating, we went to see the Forgotten Carols at the UVU events center.  It was our 5th date I think.  Here's a panorama I did with my phone during intermission -

  Christmas morning was fun!  It was like I was in high school again because it was just me and my parents.  We had fun opening gifts.  Here are some pictures -

My parents got me a Nintendo 64!

My dad has worn the same striped sweatshirt for like 30 years, so Jon and Kara pitched in with me and Caitlin and we got him this new, hip Volcom striped sweatshirt.

This is a pretty cool Under Armor running jacket my mom got me.  It came in pretty handy when Caitlin and I ran the half marathon - I'll post about that later.

  After we opened presents, I got on Skype and my virtual presence was had at Caitlin's house.  It was fun to be with them on Christmas morning.  Caitlin got a lot of good gifts!  She was very excited about the Fossil watch that she didn't think she was going to get.  Here's what it looks like -

It's a rose gold watch called the Cecile.  Cait's been drooling over it for a while now.

 The picture was blurry on Skype so I kind of got a headache watching, but it was worth it to see my hot wife!  Here's what the screen looked like -

Pretty blurry huh?

  Jayce was pretty funny on Skype.  The first thing he said to me was he asked, "Hey Billy, do you notice anything different about me?" I didn't notice anything, so Jayce said, "I am not sniffing as much anymore."  And that was hilarious because he's been doinging these really loud sniffs repeatedly.
  Later in the day we went to an early dinner at Uncle Tom and Aunt Karen's house.  The food was good and the Wyatts, Tom Barnes Family, me and my parents were there.  Here's a picture of the multi-colored Jell-O that Alysa made, it was delicious!

  Everyone there was asking me where Caitlin was, so I had to explain to everyone a million times that she was at her family's house in San Diego and I couldn't stay there because I had work.  It was funny that everone asked me about that separately from each other.

  I spent the rest of the Christmas break hanging out, playing Hang Time on my N64, grading papers for Caitlin, working, and stuff.  Here's some pictures -



The Sutherlands love pushing the limit with their cars and drive way past the empty line so confident that their cars won't run out of gas. I always am so nervous when I'm there for this, but I was driving home from work and the needle went past the empty line before I got to Costco to fill it up!  I had to send this picture to Caitiln and her mom so they'd be proud of me!

Caitlin doesn't really like going to Panda Express and I love it, so we rarely go.  She's a good sport sometimes and goes because she knows I like it so much.  I had to make sure to get my fill of it while Caitlin was in San Diego so I wouldn't want to go so much when she came back.

While grading some assignments for Caitlin, I found this answer to question #6 which was "What are your plans for Winter Break?"  I was a little freaked out and I thought this response was funny.

This response literally killed me and then I came back to life!  I thought the answer for #56 was so funny, I wanted to give them the points for it, but it's completely wrong so I marked it wrong.

I sent this picture to Caitlin just to remind her, in case she was having too much fun in San Diego, that I am fun too and that I make some darn good cookies.  Caitlin's mom makes way good cookies, so that wasn't much of a strong argument...

  Christmas break was a lot of fun!  I love Christmas and I'm glad that Caitlin got to take a break from teaching and get in some good time with her family.