Cancelled

Church is cancelled this morning. I was already dressed and getting the boys moving when the phone call came. Chad was at the church shoveling the sidewalks. So, the walks are clear and I was showered earlier than I wanted to be.

But if there's going to be a day that's suddenly wide open with no plans, isn't the best to be right after Christmas? This way we get more family time for playing with Christmas presents. I have a feeling we'll be playing Monopoly Jr. later this morning.

Nathan was supposed to give a talk in Primary today. We wrote it last night and then I remembered that the printer needed to be installed. I had uninstalled it just before Christmas because it was acting up. It only took us 3 hours to get it re-installed and functioning last night. That printer doesn't know how close it came to physical abuse! So anyway, maybe Nathan can give his talk next week. (Hopefully, Daniel will have an opportunity to give a talk soon because he was expressing a desire to give one last night.)

We had a nice Christmas. The kids were so excited for Santa to come. Daniel couldn't even get to sleep. He came down once after Santa had already set out the presents, but I don't think he noticed. He did say the next morning that he saw Santa's shoes! The three oldest got a box of K'Nex each. They have been busy building, Nathan particularly.

One favorite present has been disposable cameras. They got one from us and one from Grandma. Leah's are both out of pictures and she's wondering when in the world I'm going to deliver her pictures to her! I'm wondering the same thing!

We traveled to Utah to visit cousins and grandparents for a couple of days. We had a nice visit.

I learned that my brother, Aaron, should have been a pirate and my brother-in-law, Cody, likes to make friends with Cannibals! (what?)

The roads were fair. We made sure to leave Utah in plenty of time to get home before dark. So after lunch with Grandpa Peterson, we loaded up and hit the trail. The snow started about Woods Cross and kept us company the rest of the way home. Malad Pass was a little tricky as well as other random spots. We had an altercation with a snow plow at one point and ended up with a chip in the windshield. I'm very glad that we did not have to travel any of those roads in the dark. I think I would have pulled over and waited until morning!

Yesterday was a productive day for our family. I finally made some rooms bigger by making the laundry room smaller. (I moved some stuff out of the rooms and into the laundry room where it will sit until Chad gets the time and/or motivation to find a place for it in the garage.) Chad installed a new light for the dining room and replaced the dead microwave in the kitchen. Both were Christmas presents for the house/family. He even replaced the light cover on the van. We bought a replacement while we were in Utah instead of trying to find one up here and having to wait for it to be shipped up from Utah. (The old one was cracked and filling with moisture.)

Now for pictures. I am working from my laptop while sitting on the bed with Joseph sleeping on my chest. Since I'm getting my pictures remotely from the main computer in the next room, I'm unable to see what they are before I add them. Think of the following pictures as a grab bag!

These are some shots of the kids playing in the snow on Christmas Eve. We got a TON of snow that day and they had an early Christmas present. The "foggy" picture is of Daniel and Leah as they worked on a snowman. It's really just a mound of snow, but we won't blame them for poor snowman snow. The picture isn't very clear because it was taken through the window.





The kids dug right into their stockings and Rebekah dug right into anything edible. She ate so much sugar in a short period of time that I was sure she was going to be sick.







The kids got Silly Putty in their stockings. They were quite curious about it's properties. Even this morning, Leah was noticing how skilled she was with it. (In fact, she's so skilled, I've had to comb it out of her hair.)







Rebekah's gift from Santa was some Little People toys. You can see that she didn't get to play with it much at first. It's tough to be the 4th child in a family!


Here we are having dinner with cousins. All of those kids makes for lots of noise and lots of mess. Lots of tears, too. (Not just from the kids!)



















I snapped this picture of Rebekah on the road. Silly Girl!