Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays!

Brett and I were able to go home for the holidays this year and boy was it a great reminder how much we are truly blessed with wonderful family members. We absolutely love being home for the holidays and hope that we can continue to go home - even if we don't live there year round. We were able to spend lots of time with family and friends and just enjoy being home in Cache Valley. Of course, the weather decided to greet us as well and we enjoyed some snow and some really cold days.
We spent Christmas Eve and morning with my family and then headed over to enjoy the Petersen's and the Anderson's at the Petersen's. Christmas morning we decided that having only adults in the house makes for a fairly "boring" Christmas so we headed to Les Miserable at noon on Christmas day. It was wonderful - I cried and was amazed at the acting and singing. It was well worth it.
The days following Christmas, we managed to squeeze in quite a few things: sledding with the nieces and nephew, skiing with the brother, horse races, a few more family parties complete with bowling and games, a few game nights with friends, the lights at Temple Square, a morning spent at the Fun Park with the nieces who had been praying every night that we would be able to go with them, and lots of snuggle time with the kiddos. Here's a few pictures of some of the adventures.

Grandma Suz helping Abby change the naughty sign to nice

The Petersen Men

Uncle Brett doing his best to make all the kids happy...
 and make them all cry before the end of the day

Abby making a snow angel

Not having our winter gear in Utah we had to borrow a
 little bit from everyone and boy did we find some dandy stuff....

Garrett loved making himself a Santa beard by covering
his face with snow and then licking it all gone.

Me and Abby on the sledding tube

Another look at the most incredible outfit I have ever worn...
Thanks Suz for the furry hat.

A beautiful but cold night on Temple Square

The Maynard Family

Brett all wrapped up enjoying the lights

Another look at the beautiful lights and Temple

Sparks and Suz at the lights

Me and Brooklyn roller skating

The Petersen's at the Fun Park

Grace and Ella in the soft play at the Fun Park

Ella with her Bling

I realized I didn't get any pictures of my Falslev Family.... I promise we saw them and we had a wonderful time. I guess I never pulled out the camera while I was with them except when we went skiing and I forgot to take my battery off the charger so I couldn't take any pictures.... Oops! My lack of pictures does not mean I don't love you family - it just means there are no kids to take cute pictures of while we are there... perhaps we'll have to do something about that....
My flight home was not one for the "fun book" - I was supposed to leave at 11:59pm on Jan 1. I arrived with perfect timing to the airport, didn't have to wait in any lines, got right to the gate and 11:30 comes around and no one is boarding... We sat until about 11:40 pm when they announced that the crew was on another flight from Arizona and wouldn't be there for about an hour. They also stated that once they landed we would need to board the plane as quickly as possible because the pilot was going to time out, meaning that he would have been flying too long and they wouldn't let him take off. Luckily, he got there and we loaded the plane as quickly as possible, got out to the tarmac to de-ice the plane. And then we sat.... A few minutes after de-icing, the pilot came on the intercom and said that we'd be going back to the gate because his partner was going to time out mid-flight and they would not allow us to take off. So back to the gate we went. I was one of the first off the plane so I was able to get to the front of the re-ticketing line. However, there was a computer re-boot at 2 am, which shut all of the computers down for about 15 minutes. Then they couldn't find a flight to put me on. By the time they found a flight and got me a hotel voucher it was about 2:45 am. Got to the hotel about 3 am and finally made it to sleep on a rock hard bed only to have to wake up about 3 hours later in just enough time to eat something quickly and get to an over-crowded to do it all over again..... And come to find out my ride got called into work that day and wouldn't be able to pick me up. So I had to hurry and find the shuttle company's number, call and reserve a spot before I got on the plane out of SLC. Once I arrived in NYC, one of my bags got put on a different carousel then the other one and I stood there for probably 20 minutes waiting for it to come out. Then the shuttle company was about 30 minutes later then they originally told me, now putting us into rush hour traffic out of NYC. Once I arrived home about 6 hours later than I originally planned, I took a hot bath and went to bed. It always feels good to sleep in your own bed after being gone for awhile but last night felt exceptionally good.
It's always sad to leave but it's nice to get back to a routine. Because of our busy schedules coming up this coming year, it's very unlikely that we will be able to make it back before the Christmas Holiday next year and boy how I can't wait for another fun time next year!