This week in review. . .

Wow, what a week. It has been a whirlwind, for sure. The Friday before Christmas started our official family Christmas gatherings. We had my Dad, step-Mom, little sister Hannah, my niece & nephew, Sam & Mary, and Christine, Jesse and their new baby Anderson over for Christmas dinner and gift giving. It was a great time of fellowship. Christine became a part of our family her junior year of high school and is truly a sister to me. My step-Mom made wonderful food, all I had to do was rolls and dessert. One of their gifts to the boys was Webkinz. Finley is a little young for it, but they knew he would want what Avery was getting. We had fun playing with it this morning, but I'm going to need my little sister to come over and really show them how to do it! Christine made me some awesome biscotti that I have been enjoying with my coffee in the mornings. I didn't take many pictures, but my dad took a bunch with his new camera, so I'm hoping to be getting some good ones soon. AJ and I stayed up late that night packing and cleaning up. While we were gone my friend Jackie and her family stayed here. It was nice to know our house wasn't sitting empty for a week!
On Saturday morning we left for Kansas to AJ's parents. We crammed a 5 1/2 hour trip into 9 1/2 hours. It was rough. The boys were real troopers. But, it was hard to spend hours going 20 miles an hour through a snow storm. We spent about an hour sitting completely still on a bridge in Wichita. I was a little nervous about the weight limit of that bridge as I was looking at all the semi trucks we were stuck on the bridge with. You better believe I was planning an exit strategy in my head! When we finally made it to Inman (population 1000) and were 4 minutes from AJ's parents, we got stopped by a police officer. Our break light was out....apparently it had a short. To make matters worse, AJ's license was expired (which we did not realize). He was kind of a jerk and kept us there for 20 minutes. He mentioned arresting AJ 3 or 4 times, and said his DL picture didn't look like him. He kept acting very suspicious like we were up to something. He kept asking where we were going. I wanted to say, "We're actually going on a drug run, we just like to take our 2 kids and a back seat full of Christmas presents along for fun."
Anyhow, we finally got back on the snowy road, and made it to AJ's parents. We stayed almost a week. It was really fun. There were a few bumps with half the family getting stomach flu and other sicknesses, but all in all, it was a great week. I really love sitting at a huge table full of people. There were 12 of us all together. It really makes me want to have a big family. I want to look around my table one day and see it full of faces. Some highlights were, going wedding dress shopping with Jill, playing Settlers of Cataan and Hand and Foot, sitting in the hot tub while it was snowing, visiting Grandmas and Aunts and Uncles, and Cousins, and of course, celebrating our Savior's birth. AJ's family is so great, we always look forward to time there.
We came back on Friday and had a much smoother trip. Saturday night we celebrated Christmas with my Mom and David. My mom cooked a great meal and we sat around the fire place to open presents. My mom gave the boys some really thoughtful gifts, including a huge pop-up tunnel that they have had a blast playing with. David made us a new desk for Christmas. It is beautiful and I can't wait to get it here! He is an amazing craftsman and does excellent work. He made two really nice file drawers which I desperately needed. You don't even want to know how sad my filing "system" (and I use that term loosely) is right now.
We are now just trying to unwind from the craziness of the holidays and hopefully enjoy a relaxing New Years Day as a family.

Here are the 3 boys in Kansas: Cousin Drew, Finley & Avery ---They had a BLAST together. They played so hard from the moment they were awake until their head hit the pillow.
Here is our little family on Christmas morning...ignore our hair, we just woke up. ;)

I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

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