Road Trip!!! Virginia Here We Come!

   

The trip from Rock Hill, South Carolina (where we were) to Williamsburg, Virginia is about a 5 hour drive. Thats not bad, but its not great either. The first thing I noticed while we were driving along the highway is the massive amounts of trees there are on the East Coast. Utah has hardly any trees unless you go to the mountains. But back East there are trees everywhere! It seriously looks like they cut down a square of trees to build a house and the rest of the property is completely surrounded by forest! I think it looks really cool, but my little sister Kalena got Paul started playing a zombie game called "Into the Dead" and it has forests on it, so I started freaking out about zombies coming crawling out of the forests!!! Nothing of the sort happened, but it literally was on my mind every time I looked into the huge trees! I even had to take a picture of Paul and myself walking into the creepy cool forest.

       So, the drive... We had to meet Eric and Amanda a little ways up because they had taken Milo to the ER. Both Milo and Sage had a cold, and as most of you mothers know a common cold for an infant is dangerous RSV. Milo was having trouble breathing so off to the ER he went. No worries though. Drs. said it was RSV and he needed to get all the gunk in his lungs and throat cleared out. So while Eric and Amanda were at the hospital doing that, we were driving to meet them, but along the way Julie wanted to visit an old professor of hers while she was back East. We made a pit stop and visited her professor for a while then headed back to the highway to meet the rest of the family. We stopped at a park for to have lunch and meet up. We ate our food, then of course I had to go play on the playground! Cute little Sage, (my nephew), is really active and came to play too. We had fun on the slide and playground equipment for a little bit. Paul and I found an out door chess table, (like the ones you see in the movies), so we sat down with Sage, convinced him to pose with us and took some pictures. 

       After our brief pit stop, we hit the road again. Everything was going great until Sage got car sick! We had to stop twice and clean out his car seat and the van! Poor little kid. He was happy as a clam after the car stopped moving, but those twisty, windy roads must have made him nauseous. We finally got to the condominium we were staying at sometime in the later evening. I was quite impressed with the size of our place! We had two bedrooms upstairs one with a jetted tub :) a kitchen, dining room and living room! It was pretty sweet! Paul and I got stuck with the hida bed couch thingy, but we figure that until we have kids we will prolly always get the ucky hida bed couch thingy. No worries though, we survived.

      After a late dinner and a TV show, we all went to bed to prepare for the fun adventures tomorrow would bring. Which I will write about in the next post or this one would be forever long!! 

A Carolina Wedding!!

       Paul and I were lucky enough to take the red eye flight to South Carolina. We were also lucky enough to travel with his brother Eric and Amanda (sister in law) and their two very young children on the said red eye flight. It sounds bad, I know, but it really wasn't too bad. It was quite hysterical watching four people with two babies trying to navigate the airport with a ton of bags and the kids. No worries though, we managed to get all the bags checked into the right places and got everyone onto the right planes. We left from Salt Lake Airport at 12:50 AM and arrived in South Carolina at 9:15 Eastern time (7:00 our time), and we were expected to be up and ready to roll asap.

       After getting checked into our hotel and having some breakfast we went right over to the church where Peter's reception would be to help set up. The church looked really cute and only needed a few finishing touches, so we spent a few hours getting all the last minute decorations put up so that we were ready to go for the wedding tomorrow, (Saturday December 27th). After the church was all set up, the girls got to go get manicures while the boys entertained themselves for a little bit. I had never had a pedicure before so I decided to get one of those, and man are they nice. I was a little weirded out at first by the Asian man washing and massaging my feet, but it turned out not to be so bad. Jessica's family had a dinner for everyone, (kind of like a Mormon style rehearsal dinner I suppose), which turned out to be great. We met all of her family and got to know them a little bit better.

       Wedding day! Julie woke up to go running, which woke me up so I decided to go, and in her effort to not wake anyone up she woke up everyone, (it was kind of funny). Anyway, Julie and I went for a nice hour long run in the rain, came back to the hotel, had breakfast, and showered quickly as we could so that we could be all ready to go for the wedding. Eric and Amanda were a little late getting their kids together so Peter and his parents left to go to the temple before we did, and on the highway we totally caught up to them and arrived at the Colombia South Carolina Temple the same time that Peter did.
       The wedding was beautiful. The happy cute couple just seemed so happy. They were glowing and you could tell that they were in love! After the ceremony, of course come the pictures. It was so fun to see all the cute poses they did and all the fun pictures they had taken. I made sure that Paul and I took some of just us while we were dressed up so cutely. Finally after pictures were done we had an hour drive back to the reception location. I slept so it was no biggie.
                                                                                             Upon arrival, we had to get all the very lastly finishing touches set up. All in all the reception looked amazingly cute. Once the reception started Paul and I tried to act interested in everything. We were just holding out until we could trash the car. That was one of the high lights of the evening. Sadly it was too cold to completely trash the car. We did what we could with what we had in the cold. When the couple finally got ready to leave they started handing out these huge massive sparkers! They were the coolest things I had ever seen! I am not joking you when I say that the sparklers were almost as tall as I am! We lit them off and made a lovely walk way for Peter and Jessica to run down to get into the car. Once they left we had the joys of taking down and cleaning up the reception hall. Thankfully there were lots of wonderful helping hands there to get it all taken care of. When we finally got back to the hotel, Paul and I crashed. We were so tired from the day, still trying to catch up on sleep from the red eye flight, and I guess we were subconsciously preparing ourselves for what was going to happen in the wee hours of the morning.
       At around 3:00 AM everyone in the hotel wakes up to a banging on the door. We come to find out that Eric's 3 month old baby, Milo, was having trouble breathing and they were really worried about him. Paul and his dad got out of bed to help Eric give him a blessing. But again at 5:00 AM we hear a banging on the door again. Eric said that Milo was doing ok but they were going to get packed up and find an emergency room to take him to. Paul and I had to wake up and pack the luggage Eric needed to take with him. Its a good thing we went to bed early as we could because we sure didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night.
       When we finally had to get up in the morning for good, we got ready to go to church. We went to sacrament then, started the 5 hour trek from South Carolina to Virginia. That story will be in the next post!

Christmas with the Blatter's

       After five long days of school, (long only because I was ready to be on vacation as much as my students were), Paul and I were finally able to head up to Salt Lake again for another Christmas.
       We started the break off right with a snowboarding trip to Snowbird (12/22/12). My dad, Uncle Tim, cousin Brytt, Tyson, Yulia, Paul and myself all took a trip to Snowbird for some winter fun. Last time we went snowboarding Paul got injured and still hasn't completely recovered from it, so he was semi hesitant to go with me this time. I tried to convince him to try skiing this year in stead of snowboarding. Skiing is usually easier to learn and not as hard on your body as snowboarding is. Paul decided to give skiing a try. I was really excited that he was willing to come with me.

       I was really hoping that we would get some good snow before I hit the slopes, but I wasn't that lucky. The snow was decent, but a little icy in some spots. Yulia had never been skiing before she she decided to stick with the "bunny hill" while the rest of us ventured to the more intense things. Paul got tired half day and decided not to take chances getting hurt again. Sadly he just waited for us in the car while we had fun without him. The rest of us hit the good spots on slopes for a few hours.
       On sunday we decided to have an ugly sweater party, play games and drive around to look at the lights. I know we looked like crazies in our mismatched clothes, but i love my family no matter how crazy we look!

 Kalena and I showing off our smexy ugly sweaters and muck-lucks :)

       The Blatter family all dressed up in their lovely Ugly sweaters! Oh how I just love my family!!!




      Christmas Eve our plans were kind of crushed because the snow made it too difficult to go sledding. Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember we have gone sledding up Big Cottonwood Canyon at Donut Falls. And this year because it was snowing so bad, we decided not to go just because it was too dangerous to drive up the canyon. Instead Paul, my siblings, and I all built a pretty sweet snow fort in our front yard. It was literally big enough to fit five people in there. Then we had the Mustoe's over for dinner and the Nativity, (which has been a tradition as well for as long as I can remember). Paul and I had to leave my parent's a little early because Paul's little brother Jonathan, (who is on a mission),  was calling from the Philippines, (guess they are a day ahead or something). We got to talk to his brother, then went back to my parents for the anual opening of the Christmas pajamas. Then off to bed we went so Santa could come to our house.

       Christmas morning Tallus and Kessla were up ridiculously early. Paul, being the awesome brother in law got up early and looked for stockings with them. I tried to sleep in as long as possible. I finally got out of bed at 7:30 AM, (like two hours after Paul got up), and went in search of my stocking. My dad had to help me find mine because Santa hid it so stinking well! We opened stockings, got my family up, and opened presents together.
         Our family has a tradition where we draw a family name and have to hand make a gift for them that year. Every year the opening of the homemade gifts is my favorite part. I just love to see what everyone is able to come up with, and there is just so much meaning behind everything that gets made. Sorry, got a little sidetracked, anyway, this year my sister Kalena drew my name and she made me these amazing almost footie pajamas with out feet! LOVED them! My mom drew Paul and she made him a ladder ball game (so stinking cool). I got Yulia this year so I made her a pretty sweet quilt with lots of little hedgehogs (she loves hedgehogs). The look on her face was priceless when she opened it up and saw what it was.

        Tanner got to call us on Christmas from Peru and spend about an hour talking with everyone. We used Skype so we could see him and he could see us. It was kind of fun to see how much he has changed the past year and a half. After our phone call with Tanner we went to see The Hobbit, (another tradition my family has is to go see a movie Christmas afternoon or evening). After the movie we all pretty much went to bed early since we all got early this morning.
       The day after Christmas we did a little shopping to get everything we needed for our trip to the East Coast.
       All in all, my Christmas can be summed up as AMAZING!!! The time spent with my family this year was so wonderful. No one fought with each other (too much), and the spirit of Christmas was abounding everywhere.

     Stay tuned for adventures in South Carolina!
   

Christmas with the Burnett's

     Christmas got to come a week and a half early for Paul and I this year. Paul's brother Peter is getting married on the 27th of December in South Carolina and all of the family is going to fly back East for the wedding, so we had Christmas with the Burnett's early so that we would all be here together.
      Most of my teenage years I was not all up and in the the whole Christmas spirit thing, but ever since I have gotten married and essentially started my family with Paul, I have loved the Christmas Season and everything that comes with it. Anyway, this weekend we got to celebrate our Christmas together. It was kind of weird to think about open presents on not Christmas, but it was so fun to have the family all together.
      Even Eric and Amanda were able to be with us on "Christmas" with their two cute kids Sage and Milo.

     Today we opened our presents and Santa was even able to accomodate and come early for us. As far as presents go, Paul and I received some wonderful gifts. We are very grateful for all of the wonder things we were given today. Paul and I got sleeping bags that zip together. I am so excited to go camping and be able to zip them up together. Sage is almost two and it was so fun to see his expressions and reactions to everything that was going on. It has made me even more excited for our future children. I hope they will always enjoy time with their families the way I enjoy it now.
     Julie wanted all of us to sing a song in sacrament meeting, so we practiced for an hour yesterday and then pulled it off in sacrament. It was very spiritual to have everyone together singing of the Savior. I am so grateful that I was asked to help sing. It was a testimony to me of the Savior and his love for everyone.
     I still have a week of school left before I am on Christmas break. I know it is only five days of school, but I think I am going to be just as stoked for Christmas as the kids are. I surely hope that we can all stayed focused enough to learn something over the next five days. Then Paul and I will get to celebrate Christmas again with my side of the family before we leave on a plane for South Carolina and Virginia.

Only five more days... I can do it.....maybe... :)