The Last Day of Vacation

Ok, on the first day of vacation I started a blog so on the last day of vacation I think I'll try to add some pictures. (Don't tell anyone, but I already tried to add pictures and lost the first 2nd blog). I'll try again. I may not be as smart as the rest of you, but I don't usually give up trying. Even Dad says I'm a very "trying" person.

Enough of that. Back to adding pictures. We had such a blast at Christmas with Haini, Kristi, Sitani and Marley here. They came up on Sunday night and we got everything ready for Christmas Eve dinner with Penny and Dave's family and then Christmas morning. Hopefully, you'll see a few of those pictures with this blog. Hopefully, this blog won't disappear when I try to add them. I'll become more confident as I find success with this.




The most different thing about Christmas morning this year was that we were all awake and up before the children; meaning Marley and Sitani. Alisha had a hard time waiting for us to start. After all, she's been the baby of the family for quite a while now. However, we were able to unwrap almost everything before Seth called home. It was wonderful to speak with him again and to find out for real that his Christmas gifts didn't make it for Christmas. We did find out though that one of them was sent to his old Mission Home and was probably sitting in the PO there since they couldn't deliver it to that address. The other package is probably on a slow boat to China. That's going to make it a bit harder to get it to Germany. Let's just hope they send them both back here and then we can start again. After all, he'll have a birthday in April.


On Wednesday we packed up the cars and headed north in a blizzard. Sounds good, doesn't it. Actually, the blizzard had come on Friday night around 5:00 and didn't stop until around 5:00 Saturday night. With the wind blowing we had to wonder if they'd cancel Church on Sunday but nope it was was a beautiful, crisp Sunday morning that greeted us. However, the roads were so deep that it was hard getting around. They didn't plow our area until after Christmas so we felt "snowed in" even though we weren't. The roads to West Yellowstone were snow packed and very slick. Dad took the lead in the Old Faithful van and Haini followed with Big Blue and we made it just fine. Daniel and Dalynn came in later and although it was dark when they got there, they were all safe, too.



So we soaked in the hot tubs, did some window shopping, bought some french fries and sunglasses, hugged a bear and froze off our noses and had a blast!! We had so much food between us all that there was no getting rid of it quickly. We did have a big dinner all together on Thursday night which put a slight dent it it and then we played in the pool and hot tub again.

The sad new was that on Friday Haini and Kristi had to head home. The good news was that Daniel & Dalynn would be staying a few more days. They actually were able to come to Church with us and Mika came to the nursery with Granma. They headed home on Tuesday and right off I can't even remember Monday.

I've visited with Kelly, Julia, and Granma as they came up for New Years Eve. We all went to a show (National Treasure- The Book of Secrets- or something like that) on Tuesday and I'd be lying if I told you that we all stayed up to welcome in the New Year. I will admit to waking up several times waiting for the Apple to fall in New York and than again as they celebrated 2008 in our own time zone. However, it is all a bit fuzzy at this point.

Now, for adding pictures to this monologue. Perhaps I should save this first because I'll never be able to re-creat it again. I realize that this alone could easily delete any possibility of actually adding pictures but what I have is better than having nothing at all, so here goes.