Christmas in Utah

Until I checked my camera, I was pretty sure that we'd taken LOTS of pictures on our trip. Turns out we didn't. We pretty much only took them on Christmas. Oops.

Despite our lack of picture taking, we had a FANTASTIC trip! Brad and I kind of couldn't get over how much we enjoyed it. We got to spend a lot of time with both families, which was great. I left a few days before Brad because tickets were cheaper. And, again in order to save money, Brad flew stand-by home. Well, sort of home. It turned out that he and Michael didn't make the Rochester to NYC connection on the first attempt, which meant they were Rochester-bound for one extra day, and then only narrowly made it to NYC on their second attempt. Once they got to JFK, things did not look good for the SLC flight, so they hopped onto a plane bound for Vegas. Once in Vegas, they took the shuttle to St. George, then a sweet cousin shuttled them from St. George to Cedar City, and then Grandma and Grandpa Hunter let them take one of their cars up North. I was SO glad to see Brad at the end of that long day. (Particularly because I wanted to show him my newly-acquired gingerbread house burns - we were talking HUGE blisters, my friends. Still not fully healed, if anyone was wondering.)

We moved locations about every 2 or 3 days. I thought this would be really hard on the kids, but they were great sports. Annie did tell me that we went from "house to house to house". But at each house she found someone that she ADORED, so she was fine. Her older cousins and younger uncles were all so cute with her and SO helpful to me with the kids. They both felt so loved everywhere we went. It was fun for me to see how much both of the kids loved their family. Annie would wander around Bobbie's house looking for Tanner, and James just lit up the moment he saw Grandpa. James' cousins found out he loved to have people growl at him, so his cute cousin Eliza would run up to him and growl the moment we walked in the door. We are so lucky to have such great families!

We played lots of games (For Sale and Qwirkle were the big hits of the season for me). Brad went skiing. Isaac took care of my blisters and got me on antibiotics for the infection. We ate lots of yummy food. We went to a beautiful angel party. We went to the St. George temple. Brad played/arranged some oldies for his Grandma Hunter. We went on several dates - BYU basketball, Hatch's hot chocolate, Moneyball, Temple Square, etc. We witnessed some good friends get sealed in the Mount Timp temple. I'm sure I'm forgetting other important events. The most fun thing for us was being with our families - we just (literally) could not get enough of you. We are missing you! (Annie told me that just today.) It was such a great trip! Here's hoping we see you all again in June!

(My computer where the pictures are died a little bit ago, so these are the only pics I have right now. More to come.)