Christmas 2016

This Christmas was a bit different for my family. My aunt decided we needed to do a Christmas at a cabin, so we all pitched in a paid to rent a cabin in Island Park, ID. Friday afternoon I went and picked up my cousin Jamee and we headed up to Idaho. There was a winter storm advisory for Idaho and we were hoping to miss it. We didn't have any weather trouble until we got to Island Park and even then it wasn't too bad. We did see a moose on the drive and we only got lost for a minute.

 Saturday was a rough day for me. I was highly emotional and irritated by pretty much everyone and everything. There were many tears shed and tissues used. I did manage to pull myself together to participate in the Christmas Eve games. I was on the reindeer team with Sadie and uncle Benny and I won the guess the ornament game only getting two wrong and they were so similar that it was really just guessing for everyone anyway. Elsa or Anna and Elsa, how was I to know? :)

 Christmas morning I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. The front room was occupied with someone sleeping on the couch and no one else was awake except my brother David, so I had him come back into my room and we watched White Christmas on my laptop in the giant bathroom.

 Christmas morning was noisy and busy. 6 kids make everything a bit louder and busier. I got everything I asked for on my list and enjoyed watching everyone else open their presents. We read Luke 2 and had breakfast and then went to play with toys, watch movies and read books.

 I tried to take a nap, but my Kevin convinced me that I should go on the garbage run with them. We had 8 bags of garbage that needed to be hauled out and he assured me it would be fun and that the landfill was open.

 He was wrong. The landfill was not open so we had to haul the garbage back. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of carrying two bags of garbage on your arms while riding on the back of a snowmobile on a bumpy trail, let me save you some time. Don't do it. My body is so sore. It was a great core workout, but my legs are killing me, my neck is stiff and my arms are visibly bruised. It was quite the adventure.

 I spent a lot of my time over the weekend working on this 1500 piece puzzle. I was grateful to my mom and cousin Richard who put in many hours helping me as well as Kaylene, Julie, Marc and aunt Tammy. We finished it at 11:30 on Christmas night.

We headed out Monday morning. I was hoping we would get snowed in, but the nice neighbor man came and plowed us out. It was slow going back to Sugar City but the rest of the way back to Utah was clear roads with a bit of fog. I wasn't feeling super awesome for the drive and when I got home I got my stuff inside the house, ate some crackers and had some 7up and went to bed by 9:15. Overall it was a fun and successful Christmas. I'm back to work today and trying to prepare myself for student teaching starting on January 3rd.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!