No Place Like Home for the Holidays

We were fortunate enough to be able to head home to Utah for the holidays this year. We had a wonderful time there and were able to enjoy many families and friends. We thoroughly enjoyed our whole trip home but some of the highlights were as follows in no particular order:

Watching USU in their first bowl game in over 10 years

First Sunday evening we were in Utah Scott and Heidi Perkes and Mallory and Paul Leatham came out to my parent's house and played games - Mal and Paul have a lot of unknowns in their future and it will probably be a long time before we get to see them again. We love the Leatham's!

Gracie's Surprise Birthday Party at Fredrico's

Brooklyn preforming her gymnastics and at her school sing-a-long
Sitting in front row seats just behind the Aggie basketball team (no picture)

She's the last girl on the front row to the right (in pink)

A stretch hummer limo ride with the Petersen family to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point 

There were just enough seats for my family to tag along and we are sure glad that they did!

The limo lights.... crappy picture but you get the idea...

The kids (old and young) thoroughly enjoyed the limo ride

Abby made quite a cute angel for the nativity  on Christmas Eve

The Wright/Maughan Christmas party - Nativity

 This year the Wright/Maughan Christmas Eve party was quite epic. The kids were all in a performing mood and we were graced with many great performances. All were great but my favorite would have to be Garrett  singing "Christmas Christmas" by Alvin and the Chipmunks with the talking parts and all. He surprised us by screaming "ALVIN!!!!" into the microphone so hard that his little faced turned bright red. Unfortunately we were a little late on pictures so you'll just have to try and understand.

For Christmas this year I made all the kids beanies and aprons.
Brooklyn and Grace were the only ones we could get to pose for a picture

This was Sue's gift from the kids this year
It was a huge blanket with lots of family pictures on it
She loves it but we'll see how long it takes her to actually use it instead of keeping it "on display"

The rest of Christmas Day was spent playing with lots of new kid toys, skyping with the Jones Family in Alaska, and playing games - many great memories.

Ugly Sweater Party with the Atwood's and the Findlay's - yes Brett does have on a "dickie" and sported a "dickie mullet" the whole night

Partied with the Newton Crowd at the Anderson home (we missed a few of them but it was fun to get together with those that could)

New Year's Eve - Heidi and Britt are my BFF's :) 

This was Brooklyn's goodbye to me. There were tears shed by many - especially her.
She had quite the grip on me but it sure does feel good to be loved.
I love that girl.

A few other things that we enjoyed but were unable to get pictures of were
*Driving horses on the chariot
*Lots of movie watching
 -Sherlock Holmes
 -Mission Impossible 4
 -Breaking Dawn, part 1 (Brett didn't join me on this one - and I am glad he didn't...)
 -Warhorse

The Petersen Family met together for the "last supper" before I left early the next morning and boy was it epic. It started off with the toilet overflowing. Just as that was cleaned up, Gracie was running around and started coughing and coughed so hard she gaged and thew up. While cleaning that up Garrett walked over to Craig and said "how's it going Grandpa?" then proceeded to climb on his back. He stepped on his leg to be able to make it on top and he didn't have good footing so down he fell, putting his elbow into the nasty bowl of puke water and spilling the puke water all over the floor. It was quite an epic night.
We enjoyed spending so much time with our families. We feel so blessed to be so loved by them. Our hearts are full of love as we travel back to our home in Connecticut.
I left Monday, January 2, and am back in Connecticut. Brett will be in Utah until January 10th. Let's just say I am looking forward to that day! :)