While working on Tuesday, December 23rd, I made an executive decision that we would leave for St. George the following morning instead of after opening Santa's goodies on Christmas Day as originally planned. We are glad we trekked across Utah on such a good day! The roads only got yucky after Cove Fort, and we heard (and saw when we returned) that we were blessed with some WONDERFUL snow on Christmas Eve, but yucky driving conditions in SE Idaho.
We had such a fun time with Ryan's Parents!!! They are working at the St. George Temple for the winter, and they showed us around the temple grounds on Christmas Day. Their apartment is slightly smaller than ours, and just because it rained the three days we were there, didn't stop us from picking Pecan nuts from the temple grounds, touring historical sites, and going for nice, wet walks! Tanner especially loved the Visitor's Center, which was also a fun place to visit...quite a few times, I might add!
I TOTALLY suprized Ryan with a GPS system...no worries, he's already returned it though for a bigger and better model...I wonder if we'll actually use it!!! I also got him this cool book about Idaho, with trails and locations, all with GPS coordinates...when my dad saw it, he was in love...so we let him keep it and will get Ryan another one.
I think the highlight of our trip was actually going swimming in an indoor pool not far from St. George (...Santa Clara?). It had a nice warm pool, a water slide, 'lazy river', etc...that was PERFECT to wear out the boys before our long drive home the following day. Sadly, but for your sake, I got no pictures of these events. We were so relaxed we forgot to take the camera with us anywhere...it sat at our hotel the entire trip!!!
After arriving at my mom and dad's house in Chesterfield following a never-ending 8 hour drive on Saturday, we were so relieved that we were almost home. While in Chesterfield, we had a really fun time with family, eating, laughing, laughing, laughing and more laughing!!! Sunday morning we all dressed and got ready for church. My sister Stephanie was supposed to speak in Sacrament Meeting, but church was canceled due to ____. We have no idea. The weather was yucky, but it wasn't a complete white out. Perhaps some of the widows were drifted in, I'm not sure. Nevertheless, we all piled into cars and drove th 11 miles into town to hear Reed's friend report home from his mission.
Monday, while still at my parents, we had an absolute BLAST playing in the snow!!! The temperature was in the 30's and after hauling our snow clothes clear across the desert and back, we were going to use them, by darn!!!
Where's Ryan? My little brother, Clay, and Ryan built, or should I say, DUG this AWESOME snow cave from all the snow in the driveway! It had three separate openings, and was big enough for us all the crawl through...needless to say, I had a panic attack when I was inside, after hearing about so many avalanche victims throughout my life and feeling like the whole thing would cave just to see if I knew what to do!!! (think: cover head and make air pocket to breath, but don't breath hard!)
Deseret was a trooper and played with Tanner while Katelyn and I BUILT a snow fort for our war later that day...I could barely see over the top when it was all done. I think it goes without saying that we lost, the boys won. We even recruited Stephanie to come out and help us bomb them, but Tanner became a prisoner, and we had to free him while catapulting the guys. :) 
After completely demolishing our sturdy walls, Ryan, Tanner and Deseret went on a short ride on the sled...Tanner was nervous at first, but loved it! I lovingly forced Ryan to wear a helmet, since he would be driving just around the house and close fields...we couldn't find helmets small enough for the other two...I had to apologize to Ryan afterwards...but he does look like he's ready for some serious riding! They didn't get too far before we saw our crew walking back from a field...the machine actually quit on them...it's quite a funny story but this is already getting too long!!!
When we arrived home, we found that Santa made a small drop-off at our house. Our kids are so confused!!! Tanner keeps asking, "Santa coming to our house today?" and I have to remind him that Santa only comes to our house once a year, but this year he forgot! Silly kid! We were blessed with a lot of necessities...clothes, shoes, you know, underwear, the works!!!
I'll end with an overall...Christmas was wonderful! Our families are so good...too good to us. We are so blessed, and know that our Heavenly Father loves us so much! We really enjoyed ourselves and our kids did surprisingly well for the week we were gone. We are glad we trekked the trek and enjoyed our families! We hope your Christmas was full of fun, family and good food, too!!!
2 comments:
That is a lot of driving, but after reading your post, it all sounds worth it. SO fun!
Wow! I think we travelled as much as you did! Crazy, huh? But so worth it in the end! :) I'm glad that you had a wonderful Christmas! You have such a sweet little family! I'm so glad that we can be blogging buddies! :)
Post a Comment