My family is cooler than your family.

Sorry, it's true. There are many reasons why. I don't want you to get so ridiculously jealous that you never return to my blog. You can just wait a few more years to marry one of my amazingly adorable/handsome nieces/nephews so you can join our family, but even then - I'll totally be on to you, and probably won't appreciate you trying to weasel your way into our fantastic family. Just sayin'.

If you want to be as cool as us, I've bolded some ideas and included photographic evidence as to what you can try next year. Good luck. This post is going to be in order of awesomeness, not in order of events.

4 CHRISTMASES: Vince and Reese aren't in my family, and if you've seen this movie, this is nothing like our 4 Christmases. Conor & I share Christmas morning with his family, and we usually end up at my Mom's that afternoon to open presents with Denise's kids, Al & Pax. Then, once the Wilsonville Beans and the Boise Beans make it into town, the fun really begins. We have Christmas at my Dad's, and Christmas at my Mom's. And you thought divorce was a bad thing. HA!


Christmas at my Dad's is always a lot of fun - to say he loves Christmas would be an understatement. Half the presents under the tree are "To: Kent, From: Santa" - nice try Dad. He also has very tall ceilings, and always gets a tall tree. One of these years I will watch my Dad decorate the tree. No, I won't help. Just watch.


We always go in order from youngest to oldest, but every once in a while Dad just starts tearing into a present - it's only fair, most of them are for him anyway.


Apparently Max was the highlight of Dad's Christmas this year - all my pictures are of him. That kid is such a ham, I love him.


He was pretty stoked about this Thomas the Tank Engine toyset.


I wonder where he gets it from... Greg playing the Maxtar. Yeah, I went there. Remember, this is an awesomeness blog. It's awesome. Trust me.


Max also loved his construction set. He's such a boy - Transformers, Star Wars, cars, construction, the color purple - this kid loves it.


Again, no need to stray far from the pack - Greg. More on him in another post.


Ali, Pax & Gabi are pretty inseparable when they are together. It's really cute.

I swear, Conor, Jon, Jen, Denise, Madi and Olivia were all there. All of their photos included an unflattering Cheryl face in there, so their pictures are somehow MIA.


Christmas at Mema's is also a lot of fun. We exchange names between the siblings and the nieces/nephews exchange names too. This year was a perfect swap - We had Jon & Jen, Jon & Jen had us! The best present of all was that Jen has started a family blog - she always calls me with family stories because her girls are hilarious. Conor and I have been seriously pressuring her for a long time, and she has finally succumbed to the pressure! I'm not going to get you the link just yet - I promised her some time to really get it going. But I'm stoked. Again, my pictures suck - I was having too much fun with my awesome family to really focus too much on pictures...


Before we started Christmas at Mema's, we had to wake up Denise. I told you, this is her couch. Although, in all fairness to all of mom's couches, she could sleep in any of them. This is just her couch of choice.


Madi is rad. Rad, I tell you. She's an absolute trooper - Max couldn't get enough of her this trip.


Ali and Madi were excited to get started opening presents already!


Whoever has Greg for Christmas always has a challenging job. Greg is the master wrapper (That sounds dirty. Unintentional.) Greg wraps his presents in as many different wrapping papers as he can, he uses as many bows the package will allow, and usually finds something you already own to go inside the package as well. He's a doll. Once, when I was about 11, Greg wrapped up a stuffed animal for me. When I opened it, I was so excited that Greg was so sweet and bought me something like that. It was a stuffed animal he had found in my room. Jerk. (I bet you thought I was going to talk about that OTHER incident. I'm classier than that.) Greg also got us shirts from the Aloha Market while going to BYU-Hawaii. However, he couldn't just send us t-shirts. He had to wrap them in urinal cakes. Needless to say, all the shirts were thrown away. Denise had Greg this year, and she found a package of Poise Pads and began wrapping. Good job Nisers!


Conor had a great time, but he was pretty sick during this Christmas. Attractive, babe.

NEWSPAPER GAME: This is my favorite family tradition. As kids, we used to play this game during our birthday parties. The general idea is that you have a present in the middle of the wrapping, and you continue to add layers to the package - some will be empty, some will have candy or small gifts inside of it. We have recently revamped this tradition for New Year's. We take all the wrapping paper that my mom has had in the garage for years, and we use it all up for the layers. Every family is asked to donate some candy and some goodies for the game. To play the game (after all the layers have been put together) everyone rolls a die, and normally if you roll a 6, you get to rip away one layer. It was already pretty late when we started this year, so we did ones and sixes. The best part, is that we have also added a white elephant aspect to the game. Everyone brings a present and we try our best to keep it a secret from each other. Basically, it's hard to explain, but ridiculous amounts of fun.


The masterpiece. Meow.


This was the first year Gabi got to play. She was a little bummed at first because she wasn't rolling well, but once she opened her first layer, she was in - she even won this Elmo chair in the white elephant exchange!


Madi holding the package as it gets much closer to the end! Jon eventually opened the last layer - a $10 gift card to 7-Eleven.


Greg got some blingin' candy in the game. Hot.


There were some Spongebob tattoos in there, and Conor went mysteriously missing for a bit. For the record, the remnants are still there. I think they're as close to permanent as you can get.


Your mom didn't buy the family a Wii this year, but mine did: Someone always brought the Wii to my mom's house so we could play games if we wanted to. Usually it was ours, since we lived about 10 minutes away. But, now we live a little farther than that, and my mom and Jean were really excited about having their own. I was a little skeptical about how much they would actually play it, but we bought them some fun games, and Mom is hoping to invite her church friends over for a Wii night soon. Not kidding.

Jean's main present from Conor and I was this gem. It's all about killing animals and putting on your game face.


Cabela's Big Game Hunter


Madi killing some game. Olivia really enjoyed watching the game, although, she got sucked in soon enough.


Look at this sweet, fantastic, perfect, wonderful, cute face! (Livi - that was for you!)


Denise is always cold. She was also totally into killing animals.




This game is intense. It makes you make this face. Scary.


Another popular game was the New Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii. I'm not quite sure why, or how, this happened, but I always got stuck playing with Gabi (7) and Al & Pax (6). It was fun. Frustrating, but fun. They were really cute, and Paxton is hilarious to watch.




If people weren't in there playing the Wii, they were at least in there playing another game - here is cute Gabi and Mema playing the same game on their own DS's. Adorable.

BOARD GAMES: My family spends a lot of time playing board games when we're not eating my mom's delicious cooking, playing the Wii, opening Christmas presents, or being generally awesome. Here were some that we played this year, some were new, some are oldies but goodies.


Loaded Questions is always fun. My family's main objective during this game is to make everyone laugh. We be funny.


Ticket To Ride is a big staple in our family now - Jon usually wins, I usually lose, and everyone always has fun! It's a 2-5 player game, so we rotate a lot, but it's a ton of fun.


Um, yeah. We had great intentions with the game Bang!. I played it quite a few times in Boise one trip to see Greg & Kari. Jon & Jen got this for Conor & I which is awesome - it's a really hard game to find! We decided to play it REALLY LATE one night, and it's not really a late night game. It takes one time through the game to really understand it. I think in different circumstances, we all would have liked this game. Maybe we'll try it again soon.


Square Up is so fun. Jon & Jen introduced this one to the group this year, and I loved it - it's a two player game that's a little hard to explain. You know those boards that have a spot for 16 little tiles, but you have to get 1-15 in the right spot? Hello? Anyone there? Whatever, it's fun - go to the website if you want to know how to play. It's a two player game, but Conor doesn't like it. Boo hoo for me.


Sort It Out is one that Conor found - we had originally bought it for the Newspaper game, but decided to put Bananagrams in the game instead (also a fun game...). Sort It Out has different lists 1-5 and you're supposed to put them in the specified order.

There were the usual suspects: Wise or Otherwise, Blokus, and Rook (Mormon Bridge). We know what's up.


For some reason, every time we started playing games, someone would put their pop can on the chandelier. I don't think Jean appreciated it much. That usually doesn't stop us from being annoying though.


Random awesomeness: I just didn't have anywhere specific to put these pictures, but I love my family, so tough.

Come on - she's so fantastic.


The Wilsonville Beans all got Nerf guns from Santa this year. Jen was tired of getting hit by the kids' guns, so she got the mother of all guns this year - rapid fire.


This video is a little dark, but it was really fun being behind the camera.


Madi made a fort for the kids - Max LOVED it!

New Year's Eve: This is the night we normally play the newspaper game, but this year we let Denise not scar her boyfriend and after a nice dinner, they went out to a concert and we stayed behind to play games and watch the countdown.


Happy New Year babe!



Congrats on staying up past Midnight Gabi! Like this is really anything new - she's a night owl when she's living it up at Grandma's!


We decided to use the timer on my new camera to take the first pictures of 2010! The first time I tried to do it, this is what I captured because I did it wrong. This picture CRACKS me up. I seriously love Madi.


Happy New Year - we're cool like that.


Wow. Thanks for that Conor.



New Year's Day: New Year's Day is always spent with the three F's: food, football, and family. My mom always invites over the Bobby Beans. This year, Bob & Cathy brought three of their boys and their little families: Rick, Anna Marie, Gwen and Fiona; Andy, Jessica and Charlie; Kirk, Whitney, and baby-due-in-June.


Here's Rick and Rick Junior. Seriously. Fiona is adorable - who knew the female version of Rick is so dang cute.


Gwen is adorable. And hilarious. The last time I was at their house, I came with a small present for Gwen - it was something I had in my room, but I knew I wouldn't play with it anymore, and that Gwen would like it. When I was about to give it to her, I told her "Gwen, I got you a present! It's a hand-me-down, do you care?" After a few seconds, her response: "I only care if it's a booger." She's definitely a product of Rick and Anna Marie.


One thing that I love about all the Bobby Bean boys is that they have a hilarious laugh. You can't help but burst out along with them, because it's completely contagious! Andy married his soul mate - Jessica's laugh is just as good as his. She also HATES taking pictures, so I definitely had to put it on my blog.

For some reason, we started a wrestling war in the family room - Livi and Cheryl vs. Paxton, Gabi and Gwen. Paxton fully stuck his sockless foot in my mouth, and got toe jam stuck between my teeth. Foul. How does that happen? I think the little kids won, but Gabi and I put up a good fight.


The toe jam culprit.


How can you be mad at this face?


I brought some slime from North Carolina for the kids. High Touch, High Tech calls this Space Mud. I call it Alien Snot.


The kids liked playing with it. Max liked pounding it into the table sending bits flying everywhere. Still fun!

Well, that's about all the advice I can give you. Take from this educational post what you will, but know that no matter what your family tries, you'll never be as cool as us. MY FAMILY ROCKS - I LOVE YOU GUYS!