Home For The Holidays

I've come to learn that deciding which family to spend what holidays with when you are first starting out as newlyweds can be tricky. Fortunately, we were able to spend time with both of our families this holiday season. As mentioned in the last post, Josh and I stayed in Logan and had our first Christmas together in our little home and spent time with my (Joni's) side of the family. The rest of Christmas break we were able to spend with Josh's family. We are so thankful that his parents were able to fly us out to Illinois to be with his family during the rest of the holiday season.

Josh and I arrived in Illinois on Tuesday, December 27th at night. On Wednesday Josh's parents, Jason (Josh's brother), Josh and I were able to attend a session at the St. Louis Temple. It was such a pretty day outside, sunny and all! Josh and I haven't been back to the temple since we got married so it was nice to be able to go together and to be there with his family as well. I look forward to learning new things as I go each time.

St. Louis Missouri Temple

That evening Grandpa and Grandma Grodeon (Lisa's parents) had the McDonald family over for dinner. We were able to see our nephew Colin and he was so excited to see me. Megan said that on the car ride over Colin was singing, "I get to see my girlfriend, I get to see my girlfriend." (For those of you who don't know about this, Josh's nephew has called me his girlfriend ever since the first time he met me in August. Even now that he knows I am married to Josh he still calls me his girlfriend. It's so cute).

On Thursday we lounged around for most of the day and got things ready for the open house. That night we all went out to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings and then Jason, Josh, and I went to a bar to see his friend rap. This was my first time of experiencing the bar and it was interesting indeed! I am a very very curious "people watcher" and since we obviously weren't drinking I spent most of the time watching drunks interact with one another. It was entertaining for me.

Friday evening was our open house so during the day we helped get everything set up for that. Lisa did such a great job decorating the house and keeping the plum color vintage theme we used at our wedding. She is so creative. Josh and I dressed up in our wedding clothes for one last time and so did his parents and siblings who were part of the wedding. I'm glad we did, not only because I got to wear my dress one more time but also so his friends and relatives who couldn't make it to our wedding could see us all dressed up! The open house turned out wonderful. A lot of the McDonald's family and friends were able to make it and I was glad I could meet them. I also met some of Josh's friends he went to high school with, but they didn't let me in on any secrets about Josh! For some reason nobody took pictures!!! We totally forgot. So I will describe it for those of you who weren't there. We had a chocolate fountain with strawberries, marshmallows, creme puffs, and pretzels to dip in the chocolate and also an h'orderve bar with meatballs, shrimp, and vegetables. Oh and also this yummy punch drink. My favorite thing was the bottled water. Lisa ordered stickers that said, 'Josh and Joni McDonald, November 19, 2011'. So we stuck the stickers over the bottled water labels (picture below) and it became our own special bottled water. It was such a cute idea.

Our "personalized" water and napkins

Wedding Day at the Logan Temple

Let's see....Saturday was New Year's Eve. We spent the evening doing the McDonald family tradition--fondue with steak and shrimp & chocolate and fruit, and play games. I had so much fun and plan to carry this on someday with our own family. And yes I finally got a REAL New Year's kiss from the love of my life!!

Fondue-ing it up!!

The Ladies

New Year's Eve

Bill is already getting tired...only 1 more hour to go!

My New Year's kiss