snow, snow, SNOW!!!

Ok so our trip to Utah was so much fun! We left the 23rd and came back on the 29th so we had quite a bit of time with his family which was nice! The ride up was pretty good all things considered! We were able to borrow a DVD player for the car from my aunt which I think the car ride would have been much worse without it! Tootsie did so well too! She just cuddled with Lexi’s car seat the whole way (when she wasn’t staring at me from the front seat creeping me out!) It took us about 13 hours or so to get there but we would have been there sooner if we would have known that the entrance to the freeway that takes us to Utah from Vegas wasn’t closed (with no detour signs to tell us how to get on because the only entrance was closed). Besides that and the snowy traffic and the nasty road grime that covered our window that we couldn’t get off because the windshield wipers weren’t working very well! I’d say the car ride up there was pretty good!

Once we were like 20 minutes from the house his mom started to call and Spencer wanted to surprise them and so we didn’t answer. So we finally get to the house and the garage door was open so we just walking in expecting everyone to be there and we would just walk in and say hi. So we get into the house and were like “is anyone home?” and Lori is on the phone so we go around the corner and she was surprised to see us and told Carrie (who was with Tessa on her way to Wal-Mart and on the phone with mom) that we were here. So they rushed home and we went and found Trevor and dad and gave hugs all around. We had dinner and just kind of relaxed the rest of the night.

Then around lunch time on Christmas Eve everyone came over for their prime rib dinner! Jeret has gotten so big since I last saw him and Rylen was so tiny and SO adorable it was so fun to finally see her in person. I didn’t get to first see Jeret till he was close to a year old! Lunch was AMAZING and autumn made that ribbon jello stuff and I honestly could have probably ate the whole pan in one sitting (ya right I would puke but it was SO good) and then we went into the front room by the gorgeous Christmas tree and did your presentations. For our family presentation was lexi singing jingle bells and everyone loved it. She can only get to the one horse open sleigh part and that's all she knows but it was so cute no one cared that she didn’t know the whole thing. Chris played a Christmas song on his ukulele and it sounded so cool! I liked it! Autumn and Destin read this story that was so adorable! The story was about this little girl and her daddy. Her daddy came in to find that she was wasting the nice gold wrapping paper and was wrapping a box and he scolded her and told her not to use the wrapping paper on that box. She told him it was a present for him. He opened it and the box was empty, so it got upset with her again that she wrapped an empty box and that was wasting but she them went on to tell her daddy that she has blew a bunch of kisses into the box so that way whenever he wanted a kiss from her he would just have to open the box and get one. Then the story went on to say she died a short time later and he kept the box of her kisses next to his bed for many years and was very special to him. So then autumn let Jeret pass around these gold wrapped boxes and inside them were Hershey kisses and she gave us all a copy of the story! I thought it was very creative and a good story. The rest of the evening we spent just hanging out. Spencer, Trevor, Carrie, and Tessa played video games for a little while. Then when it was time for Lexi to go to bed we picked out some cookies for Santa’s plate and put milk in his Santa’s cup and Lexi thought it was for her and tried to drink the milk so we tried to explain how Santa would come and drink the milk and eat the cookies and I think she kind of understood but not really. So then we put out the broccoli (we didn’t have carrots or celery) for the reindeer and put it on the porch. Then we put her to bed and played games for another couple hours then went to bed ourselves.

When we were woken up at like 5 or so in the morning by his siblings I went in to try and wake lexi up and I said “lexi wake up its Christmas!” and her response was “merry Christmas mommy” in her very sleepy voice. So I then proceeded to ask her if she wants to open present and she gave me an animated (as animated as she could have been at 5 o’clock in the morning) “YA” so we got up and she barely woke up enough to open a few presents. And so we saved a couple and let her fall asleep while we opened out presents from the family. Once we put her back to bed we got out the vanilla ice cream and cheerios. Now I had heard of their family tradition about ice cream and cheerios and didn’t quite know what to think about it. It sounded so weird and I was kind of scared to try it. But I actually liked it! It just made the milk a little thicker and creamier! Then around lunch time Autumn, Destin, Chris, and Michelle came over. We had the traditional Christmas ham for lunch (which was a generous gift from Spencer’s boss at his work Christmas party) which really good. We hung out with his family and decided which gifts needed to be exchanged or returned and got to just sit and talk for a few hours! After that we took lexi and went to go play out in the snow! She liked it but she didn’t like to lie down to make snow angels or touch the snow! She did like walking in it and climbing up this little hill covered in snow in the Jacksons front yard. We built our own little snow man even though he didn’t have a face or anything besides weeds for arms lexi liked him! He was still up the day we left! And then Jeret came out after a couple of minutes and they played out in the snow together and had a blast. She also thought she was a penguin! In the snow clothes she had on she waddled like a penguin and it was SO FLIPPINN HILARIOUS!!! I was crying I was laughing so hard!!

Then someone told Jeret to start throwing snowballs at people and I have to say that kid has pretty darn good aim! Whoever he was trying to hit he did with a little bit of force behind it too! And the dogs… OH MY GOSH!!! Tootsie loved the snow so much she made her feet bleed every time she went out in it. The first time we took her out it was because she couldn’t tell what was concrete and where the ground was, so she would take off and she ground her nails down to the point of bleeding. The second time is they had these thorny weeds under the snow that were tearing the tops of her feet up if she played too long. Spencer finally took her into this field across the street from their house and let her and teddy romp for like 30 minutes, they played so good together!! We all loved the snow!

Friday and Saturday we just hung out around the house and did a little shopping and just enjoyed being near his family and being in the snow! On Saturday we went to wingers for lunch and then after dinner we went to see temple light and then down to Provo to see Michelle and Chris. Lexi thought the salt lake temple was a castle and that a statue of Joseph smith was Jesus. It was so cute. That had all kind of nativities from different countries and lights EVERYWHERE!!! It was absolutely beautiful! I’d never seen the temple lights up there before and it was such a cool experience to go see it! Then we went to Michelle and Chris’s and hung out for a few minutes then we went to go see these lights some guy put to music super high on this hill with the huge billion dollar houses and it was so cool!

On Sunday was Rylen’s blessing. She was one of FOUR babies blessed that day! The church building was beautiful and probably very old. She was in this little crocheted dress Destin mom made for her and it was beautiful! Then we had the lunch at Destin’s parents house and they have a bigger dog that thought he was tough and protecting the house. So we get close to him and he was all black and lexi looks at me and says “mommy it’s the big bad wolf!” I cracked up! He really did look like a wolf though and it was funny that she had put that together! After that we went back to autumn house to celebrate Trevor’s birthday. We had a really yummy dinner and a delicious desert! Lexi liked their fishes and the birdie was very interesting to her. She has never really seen one that close and she got to touch it for a second and then Destin thought it would be funny to put it on her head and she wasn’t too sure about it but she was all smiles and thought it was silly. Then we went home packed and went to bed.

The ride home was just as good as the ride there except the fact we left at about 5 am and got home after 8 pm! The only reason it took that long is we didn’t step on the gas the ENTIRE WAY over the Hoover dam. It took us over 2 hours when it should have taken less than 10!! Oh and we got pulled over just outside of Provo. We borrowed grandma’s car and she had a temp plate on it and her windows are super tinted so we got pulled over for that and “impeding traffic” which was a big bag of bologna. Spencer was doing over the speed limit and once he saw there was a car behind him he didn’t have time to move over before the cop pulled him over because there was a car next to him. But he was all smug and kind of rude about it. He ended up not giving us a ticket but I just think he was bored and jumped at the chance to pull someone over! Tootsie didn’t like that there was a strange man with a flashlight talking to us through my window! She kept growling and woofing at him! She never bark barked but she wasn’t happy! Oh and when we stopped at this gas station a couple hours out of Provo we got out and realized it was 5 DEGREES!!!! It was so flipping COLD!! Oh and lexi has hands for feet! By the time we got home she had realized once her movie was over if she pushed a certain button with her toes it was start again! It was really funny!

Then we got home and everything went back to normal! I'm so glad we went up there! It was way fun and I'm so glad we went! Hopefully it won’t be so long in between this visit and the next though I loved playing in the snow and being able to get to know his family a little better!

( i will post the videos i was talking about in a little while. our camrea is messed up and hard to deal with so i will post them as soon as i can!)