Bogus

Christmas Eve day was appropriately spent out in the snow at Bogus Basin Ski Resort. Sharon, Derek, Claire, and Kyler skied.  The rest of us just played in the snow. It was a blast being up there with everyone. 

Shae quickly caught on to the throwing snowballs thing and was content to do that the entire day. 

Darin had some great bonding time with baby Wyatt while hanging out in the resort.

These two hit it off pretty quickly.

After warming up inside, we made our way out one last time. We watched grandma kick butt in her ski lesson. She did such a good job braving the snow. We were all so proud of her.

Poor Claire being smashed by Shae... she was a trooper.

We made our way back down the slippery mountain and found that it was actually snowing in Caldwell as well. We hadn't expected to have a white Christmas at that point, but we did! It was just a light dusting, but it was white nonetheless. There's just something about snow and family that makes Christmas magical.

Caldwell

Monday morning we made our way over to Caldwell to stay with Darin's brother and his family. I had never been to Western Idaho before. My favorite thing about Western Idaho was definitely the fact that the sun did not come up until 8 a.m. each day. I guess that's the difference between living at the forefront of the Eastern Time Zone and the tail end of the Mountain Standard Time Zone (almost an hour difference in sunrise times!). It was glorious. 

Besides sleeping in the dark, which I clearly loved (and the fact that Shae loved it too)...I also loved being with (almost) Darin's entire family! It was so fun to get to know people better and see the cousins play together. I wish we all lived closer so that we could hang out more often. I look forward to future family reunions.

We got to Caldwell just in time for the BYU game. With the boys ganging up on her, poor Linzy was pretty much forced to let Derek open his Christmas present early. (Thanks Linzy! The TV was awesome to be able to enjoy together :). That night we went to the Orchard House for a family dinner. It was a super cute restaurant with tons of lights and Christmas decorations outside. This is where we got to meet baby Wyatt for the first time. What an adorable baby! We sure do have a good looking family.

Tuesday we took family pictures.  I can't wait to see them! I am such a firm believer in picture taking. I love documenting life through pictures (plus I just have an awful memory and if I didn't, I wouldn't remember anything). I can't wait to get a current family picture up on the wall. 

Here's some of the behind-the-scenes of our photo shoot:

If only I had a picture of all of us on the other side trying to get these kiddos to look at the camera...

That evening we went to downtown Caldwell, which I fell in love with after about 20 seconds. I have never seen so many Christmas lights in one place before! (Darin and I disagreed a bit about whether Temple Square or Caldwell wins as far as the amount of Christmas lights go. I say Caldwell all the way. Maybe it's just because the lights were quite different from the temple lights...and there was a river running along the pathway with decked-out bridges...it was great). My camera didn't seem to know how to handle all of the lights, so I only got shots of the little play area, but trust me, the lights were fabulous. We might have to do another Christmas in Caldwell just to experience them again.

How It Started

So, that one time we flew to Salt Lake City so that we could spend Christmas with Darin's family in Idaho...totally worth the money spent. I am SO glad that we decided to do this vacation. Sometimes spending crazy money on flights is absolutely worth it for the memories made (and when I say sometimes, I probably mean always.  Too bad we can't do it more often).

Besides stupidly forgetting to bring anything with Shae's birth date on it and almost not being allowed to bring him with us...and almost leaving our diaper bag at security...we got on our flight and were off to Utah without too much hassle. Flying with 22 month old Shae was way better than flying with 14 month old Shae. He was much more easily entertained by crayons, stickers, cars, movies, etc. than he was back then. He also loved playing with the window...up and down, light and dark...probably drove the guy in our row crazy, but then he wasn't the one with a toddler on his lap so I didn't feel too bad.

What did our parents do with us on long flights before electronics? 

 We hung out in Utah for a couple days before going up to Poky. Got to see these lovely ladies for...not enough time...but it was SO great to see them. I miss them so much!

 We ate lunch at Red Iguana and then walked around Temple Square for a bit.

Shae and Cohen were pretty excited about the big "Je-us."

We got to see some of Darin's awesome buddies that same evening. We feel so blessed to have so many amazing friends out west that still want to see us even after we deserted them. 

Friday morning we made the drive up to Idaho. We somehow ended up at In-N-Out Burger, because let's be honest, it wouldn't be a trip to Utah without a little In-N-Out (it's grown on me). We immediately went to Grandma Sharon's classroom when we arrived. She lit up with excitement as soon as she saw him. Can I just say how much I LOVED watching Shae interact with "Ga-ma" and Aunt "Mee-a." It was priceless. He sure does love those ladies.  

We spent the weekend in Pocatello, where Shae was cuddled and loved to sleep each night by his sweet grandma. We did some Christmasy things, like drive around and look at lights...and some not so Christmasy things like watch Persuasion. 

I really love seeing how excited Darin gets to be back in Pocatello. He loves it there. It's home. Someone else also made himself right at home with little complaint...

1st and 2nd Christmas

Before leaving my parents house for Thanksgiving we did a mini Christmas morning with them.  Shae really seemed to be more excited about the bows than anything else.

Then just last week we did a little Christmas evening at our place with just the three of us. We didn't want to try and haul our gifts to each other to Idaho, so we didn't. By this point Shae seemed to understand the opening-of-present-process pretty well. It was SO much more entertaining than last year to watch him open presents, and see how excited he got about whatever he opened.

He was really into helping us open our presents as well.  Probably because he thought they were for him. He wouldn't hold still so that I could get a picture of him and Darin with Darin's gift. He just dived right back over to the Christmas tree trying to get to the next present.

 He was really NOT thrilled with the boots that daddy got me.

Which is okay because he was REALLY thrilled about this little train set that we got him from Ikea for 8 bucks.

 And then we put on pajamas, laughed for a bit, read a Christmas story and called it a night. Can't wait to see him do it again when it's actually Christmas day.