Christmas in Utah

We spent a wonderful nine days in Utah for Christmas this year! Aaron's parents returned home in mid-December from their mission in Brazil, and Aaron ended up having a little extra time off work so we were happy to be able to stay a little longer. We got there a couple days before Christmas after a very rainy drive... it rained nearly the entire way!

Jake and Tiffany's family stayed at the house most of the time we were there, which was so fun! Nate & Emily's family was there for much of the time too. But everyone went to their own homes on Christmas Eve, and we all celebrated Christmas morning with our own kids.

By Christmas afternoon, everyone was back at the house. We ate together and opened presents from Grandma & Grandpa. Hey look, Noah is smiling nicely for a picture! Must have been Christmas Day that brought this on :)
This year the cousins did a gift exchange, which we hadn't done in several years. We set a $5 limit and everything the kids gave each other was great!

Nearly all of Grandma & Grandpa's gifts were from Brazil, and EVERYTHING was a huge hit! Instruments from street vendors, fresh water pearl bracelets, World Cup soccer shirts, and Noah even got a taxidermied Piranha!
It was so fun to have all the cousins together. I know that somebody took a better picture than this one...

We were able to spend a lot of time with Aaron's siblings & siblings-in-law, parents, and of course all the kids. We had fun going sledding, playing card games, playing Rockband, cooking & eating, and just being together as a family.

The first several days of the trip, we didn't get much new snow, and the existing snow had been rained on. So, it wasn't great but the kids still had fun playing in it and sledding.

But the Wednesday after Christmas, boy did it ever snow! We had thought about driving home that day but we took one look out the window that morning and decided against it. Here's Grandpa snow-blowing the back porch; this was after half the day of non-stop snowing, and it continued all day long.

I got the kids extra-bundled up and after lunch they went outside to play in the backyard... they stayed out there for a good 3-4 hours and had so much fun!

And they came in looking like this:

We drove home the next day, in pretty bad conditions: icy/slushy roads, and temperatures so cold that the windshield washer fluid wouldn't squirt out. In the middle-of-nowhere, Utah, I took a picture with my phone of our car's outdoor temp display when it was 10 degrees. Brrr! It took us a lot longer to get home than usual but we made it safely, and I was really glad to have stayed an extra day so the kids could have so much fun playing in the snow.

It was a great trip and we had a very Merry Christmas.