How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Can you tell which photo is not holiday-related? It's the photo of Mark holding an adorable baby Ella. I included this photo because it's cute and because it shows Mark doing something that he loves to do. Since I didn't gift him with a younger sibling, I give him opportunities to hold babies from time to time. Now, onto the holidays.

Five of us (Lance, Sara, Zach, Mark and myself) traveled to a very cold Rexburg, Idaho on December 22 to spend Christmas with Annica and Josh. Rachelle finished Fall Semester a few days prior to our arrival, so she had taken up temporary residence at her sister's home. Josh's mother (aka Mark's "mother-in-law"--which is a story for another day) joined us Christmas Eve. This is the first time in a long time that our entire family has been together. We played games, ate, shopped (a little), chatted, and went snow-mobiling. I should note that only the boys went snow-mobiling. Josh prevented Mark from rolling theirs.

The day after Christmas, Lance, Rachelle, Zachary and Mark returned to Washington. Sara and I traveled to Utah. The Washington-bound group was blessed with relatively good weather and roads on their journey. Sara and I had to brave the slick roads and snowy weather on our trip. It took my back and neck 4 days to recover from the tension built up on the drive.

We had a family get-together in Kaysville Monday evening. My brothers and sister and their families came, and we had dinner and played games. This is an annual event and the first one in years that I had attended. The rest of the week saw us playing games (Canasta, usually), shopping and getting Sara ready to go to BYU.

Sara and I ventured to Provo on New Year's Day. We paid a short visit to Lane and Cindy's family in Alpine. Sara checked into her apartment at Heritage Halls. I lived at Heritage Halls during my freshman year. That was (gulp!) over 33 years ago. The apartments look almost identical to the way they looked when I resided there. The few upgrades they made were: a microwave, dishwasher, kitchen flooring (no more waxing!), and raised bed frames. Oh, and a kitchen "couch." We had to buy our own at Deseret Industries when I lived there. Sara's roommates wouldn't arrive for a couple of days, so she spent the first two nights alone in her apartment.

Sara was amused by the "Mexican-themed" restaurant where we ate lunch. There were no Mexicans in sight. She was less amused by the frigidly cold weather. I gave her a little tour of the BYU campus and showed her the buildings where her classes were. Unfortunately, since it was a holiday, all of the buildings were locked. We couldn't even visit the BYU Bookstore nor buy Sara's textbooks.

I spent that night in Springville with Melanie and Greg's family and went to church with them the next morning. From there I returned to Kaysville and got to spend a little time with niece Nikki and meet her boyfriend.

After consulting weather forecasts along our route, Dad and I determined that Monday would be our best window of opportunity to drive to Washington. So we left Monday morning and arrived in Pendleton, Oregon just in time for dinner. We ate dinner at Hamley's Steak House (highly recommended mostly for the ambience) and slept at Oxford Suites. We resumed our journey Tuesday morning and made it back to Redmond in time to pick the boys up from school. We were blessed with good weather and mostly ice-free roads. The weather was ICE cold for most of the trip ranging in temperature from 1 to 36 degrees.

Dad flew home Friday afternoon. I was grateful for my wonderful traveling companion, but am not anxious to make that trip any time again soon. But, April is fast-approaching.