Day 284.

Sometimes you stay up late at night slash stay up until really early hours of the morning sitting in front of the fire with your mom, dad, grandma, and brother playing words with friends and scrabble.
There is nothing wrong with staying up until 2 am on Christmas Eve…
But there is a problem when I realized that we may or may not have forgot to leave out cookies and milk for Santa.

Super punch.
In the end it didn’t really matter because I was at one point beating Jace at his own game….
Ultimately I only lost by 2….
Which is something to be proud of when playing the King of scrabble.

Do you know how I know that my parents love me?
Well…
There are several reasons…
But.
Most importantly…
They humor me.
For Christmas 2 years ago I asked for a snuggie.
They got me a leopard one.
Last Christmas I asked for a Zhu Zhu pet.
They got me one.
This Christmas I asked for a pillow pet.
They got me a lady bug pillow pet.
…and a mustard yellow pea coat.
Super win.

The most looked forward to part of the day was skyping with Elder Whatcott.
There is nothing like knowing that your brother is still a real human and is loving his mission time in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
We got to talk to him for a little over 2 hours and heard all his crazy missionary stories.
Growing up I always thought missionaries were robots…
And then I had a brother go on a mission.
That’s when I realized that boys will always be boys.
It’s the best thing to have a brother on a mission…
To know that they made the choice to go and serve the Lord and that they are getting opportunities to help others and gain new experiences that they never would’ve had the chance to do.
The eye rolling, the nose scratching, the ‘likes,’ the forehead slapping haven’t changed…
But there is so much that has changed about him.
I cannot wait to see the person that he turns out to be in 21 months.

Merry Christmas.