goodBYE 2010

We finished off the year by hopping in the car and driving to Salt Lake 2 days after Christmas.  Well, the girls and I did anyway.  Daddy stayed home for a nice "staycation."  He said he was going to get so much done... sure...

The drive up was pretty darn easy actually.  It only took me a little over 10 hours, my personal best (no dogs with us this time.)  The weather was clear, the roads were great, the kids were awesome, the scenery in Southern Utah - amazing as always.  I like driving just for that factor.  Ok, truthfully, when I get to Spanish Fork Canyon, I always wish I had 3 plane tickets in my pocket.

We pulled into Salt Lake and started our week with the Barnhisels.  Melissa and Randy are always great hosts.  Good thing too since it never got above 15 degrees the whole time we were there.  We didn't want to go anywhere and stayed inside their nice cozy house pretty much the whole time.  It started snowing the 2nd day and didn't stop until New Year's Day. I had planned to go see a bunch of friends, but the roads were so icy and the weather so miserable, I never got out to do any of it except for a breakfast with my soul-sister Adrienne.  (She and I always seem to meet up when the weather is at its worst, so it was appropriate.)    Silver lining - Grace got a good dose of snow and winter weather.  That always makes her happy.

We did get to see Great-Grandma Primmer for a day as she was wrapping up her Christmas trip and got a few good doses of Great-Grandma Pearlie - took her to breakfast on her New Year's Eve Birthday.  I didn't seem to pull out my camera too often since one day blended into the next, but here's most of what 4 kids do to entertain themselves for a week in arctic weather:

jump on Kate's bed

show your cousin how to duel with a light saber - sorry for introducing weapons into your house Aunt Lis

make your cousins (who got at least 5 sled-loads from Santa) jealous of your one cool Christmas toy that you brought so they take their Christmas money and go get their own.  scooters in the kitchen took up at least half of the trip.

wear the same jammies

look as cute as possible

play with toys that your moms used to play with at Grandma Pearlie's house

jump on the tramp in the snow

chase your cousin in a buzz lightyear car

make Grandma help you with your new lego set

have a raging New Year's Eve party at Mo-Deb's house and laugh until your side hurts

quietly watch the skating rink in Grandma's Christmas village

watch a good movie while trying to make it until midnight, or if your name is Kate, throw the temper tantrum of the decade - good thing the decade is over Kate, you can throw another one.

eat a little too much sugar?

appreciate Grandma's Christmas tree - the only one still standing at any of our houses

eat - how many times did we feed you guys?

ride around with your cousin's dolly

play the new Micheal Jackson wii game - oh yeah, we can dance like MJ

get an awesome 2 hour astronomy lesson from Uncle Randy, our resident expert on the cosmos

run around in your underwear - good thing Aunt Lis keeps her house toasty!

play with Aunt Emmie's doggie, Pip

Grace insisted on watching the ball drop at midnight on New Year's Eve, like always.  Now that we're not on the East coast, we could have faked it at 10pm, but she's too darn smart and waited until appropriate Mountain time.  She was the only one who did make it though - the rest fell asleep.

While we were waiting, we got a call just after 11pm from Aunt Jessica (in Houston an hour ahead of us) who had the most exciting New Year's Eve of anyone.  Her boyfriend Nick, gave her a big shiny diamond engagement ring at midnight while they were camping with their friends!  I am so happy for them.

The biggest, most amazing occurrence of the trip was that ALL 4 kids were completely well for the whole time.  It is really an incredible record for us.  We have never gone to Salt Lake without visiting the insta-care, and Melissa's kids have been sick since August.  As I was marveling over this detail while driving home, I was coming down with an awesome little flu bug that we picked up on our one outing over the weekend.  Thanks a lot Salt Lake for taking your sick kids to see a movie!

The drive home was not so fun.  The skies were clear, but the roads were still bad from previous storms all week.  Colorado, apparently, doesn't believe in worrying about the ice and snow on the highway, so it took us much longer to get home.  I thought we'd never get there.  But, we finally did, and made our very long Christmas break even longer so we could stay home sick.  By the time we went back to a full day of school on January 10th, it was a very long Christmas break indeed!!

I finally feel ready for the new year.  It took me all this week to clean up from Christmas and the trip and being sick.  Having a clean house with healthy people in it yesterday was such a welcome thing.  I'm ready to get lots done now and be productive this year.

2010 was quite a long year when you consider we started January by signing the offer to sell our house in Boston and coming to Albuquerque to house hunt.  It feels good to finally be settled here and have gone through all the seasons here once.  I am definitely looking forward to all the seasons this year here too!  It will be a big year for our family with Grace getting baptized and Harriet starting full-day kindergarten.  Wow, time is flying.