California lovin'

Our final destination, the Smith house. I am always amazed at how beautiful Placerville is, the majestic trees, the smell of sweet pine trees in the air, the rolling hills and canyons that surround my parents house. Home sweet home. We were able to see pretty much all the family on this trip, Jenny and Dana came down from Oregon and Matt and Amy from Utah. We saw everyone but Alex, Rustin and Suzi this trip, hopefully we'll see them this summer. The kids love seeing their cousins and we hardly see them once we're there. We had great fun playing Smith family favorites such as charades, thimble, and of course there is always a 1000 piece puzzle on the table sucking everyone in. Our favorite game this year was Rock Band, we played until almost 1am with Sean and Kim. I discovered that I'm a pretty good drummer and that Paul is a better lead singer than me. My brothers are insane on the guitar. I loved being around all my family and truly wish we can live closer some day.

We also got to see our great friends from our days at Utah State, the Brossards and Dushku's. It's been fun to watch each others families grow and change so much over the years, we've made a lot of memories together. They are life long friends indeed.

you're Driving me crazy

Yes, we are crazy. We decided to drive from Texas to Utah, from Utah to California and then back to Texas. Over all we drove about 4,000 miles, that's 5 days in the car! Luckily we have great little travelers, they've been trained from birth. They love listening to books on cd, coloring, playing the alphabet game, napping (my favorite), and eating treats from the gas stations. Our kids have seldom had the privilege to have a dvd player in the car until recently. We were so excited to use it, and to brake up the trip a little bit I waited 6 hours before pulling it out. I popped the movie in, pressed play, and...you guessed it, nothing! It was broken! Darn it. I think my kids thought it was too good to be true anyway. We ended up using Christmas money to buy another one for the trip home, this time we bought an extended warranty.

Christmas Day!

We went to beautiful Cache Valley Utah to spend Christmas with the Watts family. The kids love seeing MiMi and PaPa. We spent a lot of time in the snow (the kids did) went swimming in the natural hot springs, spent Christmas eve day with Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts and cousins, watched old movies, played games and ate way too many treats. We got to spend a lot of time with Amy, Spencer and Dallin. It's been way to long since we've seen them. We also were able to make it to our favorite little town West Point, and visit our great friends there. Good Times!

Grant with the coveted Guitar Hero 3. This gift was definitely voted most popular on Christmas day. The grown ups took turns playing this disgustingly addictive game until we all felt we were officially professional players. I believe Paul thinks he plays so well that he could probably pick up a real electric guitar and bust out playing Barracuda. Don't worry, we let Grant play a few times with his Christmas present ;)



Zachary got a basket ball hoop that I think I saw him play with once. He preferred playing with Eliza's new kitchen, which worked out well since Eliza didn't seem too interested in it at the time.





Eliza asked Santa for a kitchen, but she told me later that her favorite thing she got for Christmas is the little tiny stuffed kitten she is holding in her hand. Who knew all Santa really needed to get was a $2 toy, I'll be sure to remember that next year.



I know it looks like we are somewhere in Alaska but this is actually my inlaws backyard. We had a blast making snow angels, forts, snowmen, but we Texans didn't ever last too long in the 12 degrees or colder temperatures...who could?




This little vintage jacket Z is wearing was actually Paul's when he was a little guy in the 70's, totally cute, I wanted to take it home.



Eliza with her snow man, and a kitty snow man (hard to see in this picture)


Grant with his snow man!



On the road again...this time we were on our way to see my awesome, crazy fun family in good ole' California! Good bye Utah!




You know when you see the smoke stack that you are either almost to Salt Lake City, or in our case headed out into the lonely plains of Nevada.

Gingerbread...it's a peice of cake

So this year we thought we'd start a new tradition by making a gingerbread house from scratch. Everybody told me to go buy a kit, that it would be much easier. I decided that it just wouldn't be the same if it wasn't home made. It was more tedious than I had anticipated, of course the kids had a blast and I think we ate more candy than what went onto the house, long story short...we'll be buying a kit next year.