Family, Vacations, and Visitations

The past two weeks have been busy! First we went to Hickory to celebrate Christmas. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved spending time with their cousins. They even got to play in the snow. I'm pretty sure Rob posted pictures. I stayed home a few days to really clean the house for the family that was coming to visit us after Christmas. So I missed the snow. It's okay, I'm finding the longer I'm away from utah winters the less I miss them. Right now it's cold, and I'm miserable. We may end up in the Bahamas or Florida, but only in the winters.

The kids loved their Christmas and the Zhu Zhu pets were a huge hit. Ginormous! And Beth loved her iPod and Caleb his MP3 player. And Jacob was just generally happy with everything that he got. Rob got a GPS system and was quite content to follow it around to various places in town to see if it knew what it was doing. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it did not. Today was his first day back to work, and he was quite impressed with the traffic report feature on it. He loved his toy. My big gift were pots and pans, but a super nice aluminum set, since I do not want the nonstick kind ever again. I'm actually really impressed at how much better everything is cooking in the pans. We also got couch covers, which are a vast improvement over our current ten year old and then some couches.

After having a great time in Hickory, we came home and my sister and her hubby came for a short visit. My kids were ecstatic to finally meet their only cousin on my side of the family! Jacob was a little put off. He liked Ethan, but I think he was worried he'd become a permanent fixture. Ethan was totally sweet, and it was nice to see Sarah and Cameron too. They are both awesome.

And then my folks flew in for a week bringing Matt with them. They came down for Beth's baptism. It was a great day. I'm so proud of her choice and all that she has decided to do in her life. She's growing up so fast and learning so much.

The visit with the grandparents was fun, lots of playing games, eating food, crafts and even a trip to Build-a_Bear. Jacob was over the moon. It was funny because he'd never been and as we got close to the store he took off running into the store. Jacob loves stuffed animals and he was in heaven. He got a stuffed monkey (of course) and then picked him out a prince's suit and named him King. My mom tried to convince him to get a more manly outfit for the monkey, but Jacob was set on the prince.

We set goals this week for FHE, but I'm also getting schedules set up. My life is much smoother when everyone is on a schedule. It's about to get crazer because the kids are starting gymnastics this week! I'm sure that they will love it!

Have a great week!