For Family Who Weren't With Us During Christmas!

This post is for our family who weren't able to spend Christmas with us. (Paul, Nichole, Ellie Bell, Porker, and Livvy AND my family who were on Kauai during the holidays!) We missed everyone so much but had tons of fun spending the majority of our three week vacation with Scott's family. It was a whirlwind of fun activities and memories and we chose our best pictures to share with all of you. Hope you enjoy. I tried to keep everything in order as much as possible and hopefully after reading this and looking at all the pictures you all will somewhat feel our love for you and hope we will be able to see you all soon. MERRY CHRISTMAS to the Dimond's in Florida and the Hale's on Kauai.
To begin with we arrived in Utah on Monday, December 15 and on Tuesday the 16th we promptly went to Cafe Rio and satisfied our four month craving. We had gift certificates from Scott's brother's and their wives!

A few days after we arrived in Utah, Scott's parents, us and Hailey jumped in the car and took a road trip to see Jon and Nicole in St. George and Em and Brian in San Diego. We left around noon on a Friday just as a big snowstorm hit the Wasatch Front. The driving was slow going but we drove out of the storm onto safer roads right outside of Provo. We made the six hour drive down to St. George and spent the night at Jon and Nicole's. We had a lot of pent up energy and so Scott took me and Hailey into the back room and wrestled with us. Luckily Jon came in and saved us!

When we first arrived in San Diego the first thing we noticed was the nice, beautiful weather! And the yummy, sweet little baby oranges Em and Brian grew in their backyard. We ate at least a hundred of their home grown California baby oranges! They were like candy and so yummers!!
Here is Em in her beautiful home with her two funny dogs Chi-Chi and Oliver! They kept us entertained the entire time, snuggling with us when we were tired and playing with us when we weren't. They would sit on our laps, lay with us in bed, or mostly by the heater in the hallway and attack each other when playing with Scott.


Meet Brian's boys, Austin and Justin! They were awesome. We played endless games of Uno and Jenga with them. Scott manned the sugar glue while making the gingerbread house and the boys promptly ate it the next day when we finished!


On the Monday that we were there with Em we went on a tour of the USS Midway! Wow, what a ship! I don't even know what to say except that it was amazing to explore and we had little headsets that we listened to while we explored each portion of the boat. It was almost like this huge city on water and it was still being used in the nineties! We took a picture of us in the Brig.
Brian took us to one of his surfing spots Sunday evening and we watched the sun go down and took a few pictures.


I just really like this picture of Hailey and think she is absolutely beautiful!We drove home on Christmas Eve and we were all beat, but still managed to cook tons of food and eat a lot! Lana bought everyone matching pajama bottoms. We made mini pizzas and chicken tacos and endless amounts of candy and hot chocolate.

Here Scott is with Gato, the love of his animal life, on Christmas morning! Doesn't he look excited?! I wonder what Santa brought?!?!Turns out Santa gave Scotty a white Christmas, exactly what he has been talking about for the past four months. All Scott wanted for Christmas was snow and we woke up on Christmas morning to SNOW! Santa also brought Scotty a few drum DVD's, new headphones, and a bag of his very own fruity tootsie rolls. (The following pictures were taken by Scott's Dad...gorgeous!)




We bummed around all Christmas day making puzzles and watching Planet Earth and eating Lana's Sweet Rolls! Big Jon came over later in the day and helped Hailey and I finish our Christmas puzzle.Jon and Nicole also came over Christmas night for a little while and they brought their truck and it was snowing and so we decided that it was perfect conditions for hookie-bobbin! We pulled out all our snowstuff and found the sled and snowboards and a rope and braved the cold. It was a blast! WE spent a couple hours riding up and down Country Oaks until we were all so cold that we had to go inside to warm up.

Craig and Lana gave all their kids/spouses a fun Christmas gift this year. They got a hotel room at the Red Moose Lodge in Eden and rented snowmobiles for an entire day! We drove up to Eden the day after Christmas and some of us, Jon and Nicole, me and Scott, Craig and Hailey decided to go night Snowboarding/Skiing. It was nine degrees when we arrived at about 4pm in the afternoon and I'm sure it got way colder than that as the night progressed onward!

These are our matching pajamas and I had just barely taken mine off when they took this picture!
This is us on our way to go snowmobiling! FREEZING COLD!!!!!!!!Scotty had just taken the snowmobiles for a "test run." He was so happy when he came back to the truck. Basically in heaven.

I'm on the back. I know. You can't even see a tiny bit of skin! I was so cold!!!!
Bowling.Shooting with Big Jon. Adrienne's first time shooting shotguns. She nailed one with a short barrel 12 gauge!

New Year's Eve. I made s'mores (alone) and promptly threw up.





More beautiful snow.

On New Year's Day we went sledding in Mountain Green where Ty and Melanie live. It was an absolutely gorgeous day!



That night we made Japanese food.


Our very last night we went to Pleasant Grove to see my grandparents and also one of my very best friends, Sara!! She met us at Denny's at about midnight and we talked and talked! It was great. A huge Christmas adventure!
We love all of you guys who weren't able to spend the holidays with us, but we were thinking about you and everyone pooled these pictures to let you know we love you and missed you. Merry late Christmas and Happy late New Year!