January 8

Today is Sunday.  We had church cancelled because there is a lot of snow on the roads.  We have had LOTS of snow (for Richland) this year.  Cade's preschool has been cancelled 4 times already and I bet he won't go again tomorrow.  It's been really cold too, so the snow has been sticking around in between storms.

We had a great trip to Utah and fun Christmas.  We spent the first 5 days at Morris' house and then the next 5 days with the Smith's.  One thing I enjoyed was leaving the kids at the Morris' and going with Kirk to visit my parents for a couple of hours on Sunday.  We also went with the Morris' to the aquarium in Sandy and we all loved that.  I took the kids and Connor to see the new Disney movie, Moana, we went to Dairy Queen for lunch and went to a BYU basketball game.  Cade had a great time playing with Legos and Cami loved setting up houses and playing with the dolls.  Ellie walked around and collected anything she could find.  We enjoyed spending lots of time with them.  Kirk went fishing a couple of days.  We also drove up Provo canyon and saw mountain goats, elk, deer, and bald eagles.  Cade loves bald eagles right now.  Its fun to watch Tom get better at being a Grandpa.  He loves the kids, but isn't always sure of how to play with them.  But this trip he read lots of stories and even played dolls with Cami a couple of times.  He showed Cade all his bullets and made sure they got lots of ice cream.

Alan and Kristi drove up from Arizona the same day we moved our stuff to my parents' house (Wednesday).  We got to watch the BYU football bowl game.  Cade and Cami had fun playing with Tyrell and we got to meet Brady for the first time.  Cade, Kirk, Alan and Tyrell went hiking up American fork canyon.  I really wanted to go, but wasn't feeling very well.  My mom, Melissa and I went out to lunch for my birthday.  We spent one afternoon/evening at the Morris' opening Christmas presents with Scott and Kara.  Lindsey and her family drove out on Friday.  Cade had so much fun playing with Daniel and Josh.  They played with castles, cars, swords, pokemon cards, foosball, sticks outside and ran around like crazy.  Saturday was Christmas eve.  We did the traditional grandpa donut run.  We opened a few presents between me and my siblings.  We had a yummy ham and potato dinner and did the little nativity play.  Christmas day we went to church and Alan blessed Brady.  It was fun to have everyone there.  We did presents in the morning.  Cade got a new bike and Cami got a doll that she could dress up.  Ellie got a hooded towel and a water bottle.  (she doesn't need or want much).  We had a great day.  I feel like we really got spoiled from everyone.

We ended up spending a lot of time at my parent's house and not going out much.  My dad can't be around people or germs.  He doesn't have a lot of energy and its hard to mobilize that many people anyway.  I'm really glad that we could go and spend as much time as we did.  I always wish we could stay longer, but I love being there for whatever time we can.  We don't get my whole family together very often.  I really liked the time we could spend with Kirk's family too.

Now we are enjoying/enduring the longer, colder part of winter that comes after Christmas.  Kirk and I are looking forward to going to Cancun next month.  We've never done a big trip like that before and it's time!  We only have 5 days and 2 will be mostly travel, but we are excited.  Tom and Lisa are going to drive up to stay with our kids.