Christmas Vacation in Utah

It was so great to be able to be with Ryan’s family for Christmas this year!  The whole thing came together pretty last minute but we were so glad to be able to be with people who have to love us just cause we are family.

(Gaige, Nick, Necia, and Camden)

(Shaylee, Caiden, Cam, Blake, Shelby, and Londyn)

(Grandma Cook and Easton)

(Kirsti and Luke)

This trip was far more successful at getting in visits with Grandmas and friends than our July trip to Utah where every single one of us got the flu.  We got to see Ryan’s Grandma Cook, my Grandma Dale, had lunch with best childhood friend Jaime Snow and her cute little family, had breakfast with the Pressley’s and that same night went to Temple Square to see the lights, and spent an evening with Kade, Karli and their 2 adorable kids!

Jaime Pressley and I taking in our short but sweet time we had together, while we FROZE at Temple Square! 

All of our cute kids together again!  They had so much fun together and were trying to plan their next reunion before we had to part. 

  

There was a pretty decent snow storm a couple days after Christmas so we headed outdoors for some sledding.  The temperature gage said it was 20 degrees out but the wind blowing like it was it was WAY colder! 

Easton and I bailed on Ryan and the rest of the kids after probably 40 minutes of playing on the snow/ice-covered playgrounds and headed for the heated car. 

Londyn joined us after another 15 minutes.

(Blake and Gaige)

 

(Caiden)

 

Ryan tackling Camden.

Ryan trying to help Cam recover from the tackle.

My boys couldn’t leave before they built a snowman.  I wasn’t willing to trudge all the way back to where they built it to get a closer picture than this.

Here we are at my Grandma Dale’s new place.  It was so good to be able to visit with her for an afternoon although I worried about every thing my 4 kids were touching and attempting to get in to the entire time.  Ryan filled out what he could for my Grandma in a family history book, the boys played her some songs on her piano, Londyn worked on my Grandma’s fairy puzzle and Easton was only distracted momentarily by cookies and chocolate.

My Grandma is such an amazing woman.  On our drive back home to Seattle I noticed that I had a missed call on my cell phone from my Grandma so I called her back.  I told her we were on the way home from Utah and my heart broke when I witnessed for the first time the Alzheimer’s that she has.  She said that she wished that we had been able to make time while we’d been there so we could have visited with her.  She seemed so disappointed that we had come all the way and not even called.  I am so glad that I thought to bring in my camera and take this picture while we were there because now I can send it to her so she knows that I really do love her. 

We did miss out on visiting my Grandma Martin (somehow our cell phones were not cooperating with each others) while we were there.  Other than that I think the trip was quite successful!