New Years in Utah!

Oh, how I love to visit my family in Utah! On the Monday after Christmas, we loaded the car early and took off to Sandy, UT.... the drive went miraculously well and we arrived in my parents driveway 10 hrs after leaving ours. We hadn't done the drive that efficiently since before we had kids! It was awesome. We only stopped TWICE - once in Kingman and once in St. George. We also attributed the quick drive to the new Hoover Dam bridge! It felt like a dream just driving over and past that darn dam. :) I know many people come far and wide to see the Hoover Dam, but I have NEVER done the tour or gone through the tourist stuff there... I just look at it as a thorn in my side as we have to slowly make our way through the winding road on our way to and from Arizona. SO happy that that route to Utah is much quicker now. :) Anyway, as always our Utah visit was full to the brim with activities and games and fun family time. I love love it!

My mom put together a gingerbread house with the girls. Mom did the frosting and the girls did the candy. Isn't it cute? :)






We went to Salt Lake to visit my Grandparents. We spent some time chatting at their home and then they took us out to lunch...




The kids played in the snow in the backyard... when we first got to my family's house, the snow was sparse, and then on Wednesday evening, the snow started coming down like crazy! The kids were so excited they immediately wanted to get out there, even though it was super windy and blizzardy. They had such a fun time out there in the freezing cold. :)




We also played lots of Kinect! We were sure to bring it along with us since we didn't get much time to play with it before leaving to Utah. And, we also got 2 new Kinect games from my family for Christmas! We had a BLAST playing the sports games. We were surprised to discover that Emma is crazy good at the boxing. hahaha! She's spins her arms like a windmill, crazy fast, and beat Ben, Sarah, and then almost beat Aaron, but we blame her loss to the fact that she was getting tired after beating the pants off of everyone else immediately beforehand. Sorry Aaron. :)



And speaking of Christmas gifts, we had a mini Christmas at my family's home when we first arrived. In addition to the Kinect games, we got some favorite movies on DVD (Eclipse, Inception, and How to Train your Dragon), an Olive Garden gift card, plus some new clothes for Ben and I, pillow pets for the girls and a new outfit and batman toy for Jake. I'm happy to see that Jake is finally getting a good collection of boy toys. Now he'll have more than just a pink kitchen and baby dolls to play with. :)

We also went ice skating at the Gallivan Center downtown. It was COLD. But it was so fun! I didn't skate because of my big prego belly, so I stayed on the sidelines taking pictures and keeping Jake warm and happy (but he was mostly mad 'cause he wanted to be skating). Emma was quite good at the skating! When we went roller skating earlier in the year, she really struggled, along with Becca... but this time around on the ice, she could actually skate without holding anyone's hand for a little while.





See, Emma's so fast, she's a blur! :)








After skating, we walked up to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. At the skating rink the cold was manageable, but when we got up to the temple, we were all freezing our tails off. Jake was MAD. But we hurried through and tried to warm up a bit in the visitors center... brrr.... but pretty!










On New Years Eve day we went to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point...


































That night we let the kids stay up a little later than normal (but not till midnight... that would have driven me crazy!). Around 8:30 we sent them outside to bang on some pots and make a ruckus. They gave some weak attempts and Becca looked mostly forlorn to be shoved outside in the cold to hit a saucepan with a spoon. hmmm... i thought they'd like it!


The adults on the other hand, stayed up till midnight (yay for me!) and ate lots of food, played many games, and made much ruckus in the process. It was a great evening! Happy 2011!! On New Years Day (and our last day in Utah) we went sledding at the nearby park. It was great sledding day... plenty of snow on the ground, and a sunny sky. The kids all loved it. This was Jake's first time sledding...








On the 2nd we drove home to Arizona. We were sad to leave. It's been weird coming home from a week long trip and holiday celebrations and immediately starting back up with kids in school. But I'm happy to say that Ben is doing research for the month of January, so he is working from home for the next 4 weeks! This afternoon he took Emma to the nearby golf course to practice with her clubs at the driving range. They both came home quite happy!