Washington DC Trip

       When I found out we were planning on taking a trip to DC I was so excited. I had never been to the East Coast before so I wanted to see as much as I possibly could. We had planned on visiting DC just as a day trip. We were going to wake up early, drive there, see a few sights and drive back home, but we finally all sat down as a family and decided that we would enjoy two days of DC more than two days of Williamsburg. We found ourselves a hotel to stay in for the night, and started planning our trip. Now I honestly don't think there is any possible way to see EVERYTHING there is to see in DC in only two days, but we sure wanted to try.
     
        Eric and Amanda were crazy and left at like four in the morning to head up there. I honestly don't know why they left that early, but they were adamant about it, so they did. The rest of us slept in till like six maybe and left then. From where we were it was a good 3 ish hour drive so we did want to leave early enough that everything would be open in DC but just barely starting to open. When we got there, it was so amazing to me. I had seen pictures of all of the sights, but I had never seen the buildings in real life.

       The first stop that we made was to the Jefferson memorial. When we actually got to the Jefferson Memorial, I didn't expect it to be so big. I have seen the building thousands of times on the back of the nickel, but in real life it is a whole lot bigger. I didn't expect so many stairs, or for the statue to be so huge. I know the Lincoln statue is massive, but I didn't really know how big the Jefferson statue was until I was standing underneath it and I looked like an ant.

       Once we finished there we started walking up the street to go to the National mall, but I got held up at the Holocaust Museum. I have always been fascinated with the history of world war two, and while I was there I couldn't resist going to the museum. It was truly an amazing experience. Each of us were given a little passport with an actual Holocaust victim's name. Throughout the museum we read about the victim we were going through for, as well as a lot of history about world war two. At the end you could light a candle for the victim as a continuous memorial. It was a really cool and very powerful experience. Paul, his mom, and I were the only ones that actually completed the whole tour. The rest of them headed over to the Smithsonian of natural history.

     When we got out of the Holocaust Museum we headed over to the Museum of natural history to meet up with everyone else. We had about an hour before everyone wanted to leave for lunch so we had to hurry through. Paul and I didn't get so see a whole lot, but we looked at some of the dinosaur exhibits, some of the fossils, and the gems. It was incredible to see all of the different kinds of gems and crystals they had in the exhibits. Once we left the museum we went back to our car and had some lunch. Then we traveled over to the national zoo. Amanda has an obsession with pandas and really wanted to see them, (which was totally fine with me because I like pandas too).

      We were told that the zoo did zoo lights and so we thought they would be open a little later into the evening so we could see the lights, but sadly for us, the zoo lights ended on the 1st of January, and here we were on the 2nd of January. Darn. We missed it by a day. We got to the zoo when it was starting to get a little dark so we really had to hurry as to not miss the cute pandas. We looked at all the outside enclosures but didn't see any animals! I was so sad. It was so cold in DC that all of the animals were in there inside enclosures and we didn't know where they all were. We found the panda house and visited the pandas for a little bit, but I guess that the chinese are VERY strict about what happens to the pandas. They have a tight schedule that has to be followed. So the panda house closes exactly at 5 every night. We got to see them but only for a short minute of time. After we got out of the panda house we visited the elephants. But these weren't any elephants, they were Asian elephants. :) They didn't look too Asian, but they were!

     We kept walking around in the darkening evening and went to the small mammal house. Sadly all of the indoor houses closed at 6ish, so we didn't get to see a whole lot. But we decided that since we saw the panda's and the elephants we had to be content with that. Plus it was getting cold and we were all getting really hungry. We walked to a cute little coffee shop to wait for our cars. Julie had a friend from DC come to the zoo with us and she was kind enough to buy us all hot chocolate while we waited for them to return with the cars.

     We got back to our hotel, cooked us up some dinner, and relaxed. Paul and I went to the hot tub for a little bit to get out of the chaos of six adults sharing one room with two babies. After we were relaxed we went back to the room to get some sleep. We had lots of plans for tomorrow so we needed our sleep.

       In the morning, the first thing that we did was drive to Arlington Cemetery. We tried to arrive at the cemetery right at eight to see the changing of the guards at the tomb of the unknown soldier, but we got stuck in rush hour and didn't make it till closer to nine. But we figured we could take our time, look around, and at nine we would see the changing of the guard. I didn't think that the cemetery would be as amazing as it was. It was so beautiful, and peaceful there. The changing of the guard was a very solemn experience. It was one of the most memorable parts of our trip.

       After the cemetery, we went to the WWII memorial, the Vietnam memorial, and of course, the Lincoln memorial. I was so excited to go to the Lincoln memorial. I have seen it on the penny all my life, and seen pictures of it, and wow, in person it is even better. Lincoln just sits there with eyes that can almost stare into your soul. He certainly seemed like an amazing man. We took lots of pictures and then  left to head to the Smithsonians.

       About half way there, I decided that while I was so close to the White House, I would really like to go and get there as close as I could. Unfortunately for us, Congress was getting sworn in on January 3rd so the White House was pretty heavily guarded. So I didn't get to see it as closely as I wanted to. While we were heading over to meet the rest of the gang we stopped at the old post office. They let people go up into the bell tower and look around at the sights. It was really cool to see DC from up so high. After lunch, we ran to the national archives to see the constitution and bill of rights.

                                                                                By the time Paul, Julie, and I finished at the National Archives it was about lunch time. Paul and I wanted to go out to lunch for a date so we split with Julie and found a sweet indian place that is like Panda Express only with organic indian cuisine! It was fantastic!!! If  they ever have a restaurant named Merzi come to town, surely try it because it was some of the best indian food Paul and I have had.

       After lunch we headed to the Smithsonian of Air and Space. The others were there for a little bit longer than Paul and I so we didn't get to see a lot, but the exhibits on planes were really cool. We also looked at the shuttle exhibits, and the solar system stuff. I wish that we would have had more time, but I decided that the library of congress would be so much cooler. We gave ourselves a tour of the library of congress and I was in awe. The architecture was incredible! And to think that so many books are housed there is just amazing. It was just awesome.

       After the library of congress we started the 3 hour drive back to Virginia. Before we got too far we stopped at cracker barrel for dinner. I had never eaten there before so that was a new experience for me.  After two long days of non stop touring, I was seriously pooped. I think I slept more than half of the way back home. DC was great. I have loved all the traveling Paul and I have done, and I am excited for all of our adventures to come! We still have one more day left in Virginia and hopefully it will be lots of fun!

     

Colonial Williamsburg

       After our semi-lame but quite fun New Years Eve, we all slept in a little longer than usual before beginning our trek to Williamsburg. After everyone got up and had breakfast we traveled to the Williamsburg visitors center. It had rained the night before and was chilly and threatening rain, but thankfully through out the day it was only cold, not raining too.
       
       Williamsburg, I guess, is kind of set up like Nauvoo, (according to Paul). It is basically a little colonial colony that you can walk through and visit houses and shops to see what it was like in colonial times. The first stop that Julie wanted to take was to see a comedy/musical show. We went into a tavern and watched the equivalent of a comedy act. Personally, I didn't think it was all that funny, but I don't have a colonial sense of humor either. The funniest part of the whole show was watching my little nephew Sage try and entertain himself. I think he was entertaining the women sitting behind us too.
     
After the tavern experience we walked through the apothecary, then walked over to the jointers. The jointers are basically like the wood workers. They build the houses, and fix everything. Once we were done looking at all of the cool wood work, we went and took a tour of the capitol. It was really interesting to see what the capitol looked like, and the history of it, but the lady that was giving out tour was SO boring. I know that it is mean to say, but she seriously had a monotone voice, no facial expressions, and put no emotion into our tour. Paul and I were sure glad when we could scurry right on out of there and continue looking at everything else.
       After the capitol we went to the jail. It was actually really neat to go and see. They told us that of the six jail cells that they had, three of them were originals from back in colonial times! They were kind of sad looking. All the cell had in it was a set of stairs, (for sitting on maybe?), and a slot in the wall where I guessed food would come in and out.
     

        We then visited the blacksmith shop, which always intrigues me. All of my brothers are into forgery and they come home with these awesome metal things, but I don't ever get to see them do it. So being able to visit the black smith forge I could get some what of an idea of all the work that they put into making their cool metal things. We stopped next at the gunsmiths shop, which was quite fascinating.  next up was the shoe makers shop, not the cobbler (because they fix shoes), but to the actual shoe makers shop. They told us that to buy a good pair of shoes it usually would costs a months wages. The cheaper shoes would cost around a couple of days wages. If I calculated that into how much I make, I just think I would never pay that much for a pair of shoes. But I guess if that was the only option I would have to go along with it.
     
       They had a big open field set up with some stocks there. I just couldn't contain myself and HAD to go put myself in the stocks. Paul, being the wonderful husband that he is, came and stood next to me in the stocks so we could pose for a picture.

We then ventured to the cabinet makers shop which was also neat. They had a lot of cool desks and finishing work that they were working on.
     

       Our last stop was one of my favorites. We went to the governors palace and watched a demonstration of how chocolate is made. They literally started with the cocoa bean and then went through the whole process of making chocolate. I had no idea how difficult and time consuming it was to get even a little amount of chocolate out of those beans. I now see why only the wealthy could afford chocolate at first. It really was a lengthy and strenuous process to make chocolate from scratch.
     
       By this time, Eric and Amanda had taken their two little ones back to the car to take them home. Paul, myself, and his parents kind of hung around a little bit longer before we headed out. We got our last few looks in, and then headed back to the condo. While everything we did fits in a reasonably small post, I assure you, that my mind was so blown from all the knowledge it soaked up. We went from place to place and every time, we were fed a little bit f history. When you get to the very end, you seriously feel so overwhelmed with all of this history. It was an amazing experience, and there is so much I didn't get to see, but what I did see was worth the while.

Tomorrows adventures will take us to Washington DC.

Yorktown and Jamestown

       The first actual day in Williamsburg, Virginia was very busy! In the morning I really wanted to work out because I had driven in a car the previous day for 5 hours and just felt like I needed some exercise. I convinced Paul to come with me. Eric brought Sage too. Not to work out, but to play on the playground near the fitness room. Sadly we needed a room key to get into the fitness center and Paul's parents had both the keys for some reason. So we all decided to play at the park for a little bit. We discovered that the playground area had a pretty sweet mini golf course. We got some clubs and played a quick 18 holes of mini golf before we went back to the room for breakfast.

   
        After breakfast, the plan was to visit Yorktown, which I guess is where one of the key battles to the independence of the colonies took place. Yorktown was basically like a living museum. They had several walk through exhibits, but they also had people acting out what daily life was like and what one could expect as a colonist living during those times. We arrived right in time to see the demonstration of explosives. They showed us how to load the old fashion guns, as well as load a cannon. It was crazy to see how many steps they had to take to actually get the gun loaded and ready to fire off. They told us that the soldiers could have their guns loaded and ready in 20 seconds flat. Just from watching the presentation I was impressed that they could load them that fast. They told us that the tents the soldiers slept in had to fit six men. The tents were honestly the size of a two man tent now a days! No wonder disease and infection was so common back then.

       Next we were able to see the demonstration of the Revolutionary War surgeons, which, are completely different from doctores I found out. :) The surgeon was usually not medically knowledgeable, but trained to find a bullet and pull it out. I can't even imagine having someone stick non sterilized tweezers into an open wound to pull out a bullet. The thought makes me cringe! Even worse, they didn't have anesthetics for the pain of the surgery, just to help dull the senses for recovery. *shudder* We got to see the types of uniforms the soldiers most likely wore and what a campsite would look like.
    
       We also got to walk around a common village and see how everyday life was lived. They had some colonial houses that we could walk through, and they were just so small! I can't imagine living in a house that is all one room with a small loft for storage. The colonists lived so simply it has made me wonder what things I might do to simplify my life. I got to see so many neat self sustaining skills that I hope I can learn for the future. They showed us how they dipped candles, how they cooked their food and preserved it. They showed us how they dried fruits, vegetables and herbs for storage, and they showed us what types of activities they did for entertainment.
   
        We took cute little Sage into the children's part of the museum. It wasn't anything fantastic but they had some really cute colonial kids clothes that we used to play dress up with Sage. None of the clothing fit perfectly, but that made him look all the cuter drowning in colonial clothes.

   

















We took a lunch break and got off of our feet for about an hour, then we loaded up again and headed off to Jamestown. I was actually secretly excited to visit Jamestown because in 3rd grade I did my famous person report on Pocahontas. Obviously that was a very long time ago, but I wanted to see if what I was remembering from my research was true or just facts that I was remembering from the Disney movie. When we first got to Jamestown, we walked through the indoor museum exhibit that talked about the Powhatan tribe and what America was like before the colonists came to live there.
   

  Once we finished the indoor exhibit, we went outdoors to the living museum (similar to the one at Yorktown). First we saw the Native American side of Jamestown. We were able to see what types of huts they built. They were fixed structures similar to hogans. I really enjoyed seeing what the Native American homes might have looked like on the inside. I can't imagine living in a hut with no real blankets, just animal furs. The furs might be much warmer than cheap blankets, but it would be so weird to me to cuddle up a bear head.

   
   

After the tribal museum, we got to look around some ships that were similar to the ships that the settlers of Jamestown took to the Americas, like the Mayflower. We climbed around on the upper and lower decks, and played around with the rudder. We also checked out the sleeping places (which are teeny tiny). I don't know how they could have slept comfortably squeezed in the little nook that some of the sailors had to sleep in. Paul and I walked out to the bow of the ship and pretended we were on the Titanic! It was so lame but kind of cute and funny that we just had to do it.

     















Once we finished touring the ships, we were able to walk through Jamestown and see what that would have been like for the colonists. They had some olds schol armor that we tried on. The helmets were a bit big on me, but it was fun nevertheless. We made it to the settlement in time to see the Jamestown demonstration of explosives which was pretty neat, and loud! We walked through their church type building and visited the blacksmith. Just seeing how villages worked together back then is so incredible to me. The amount of self reliance they had within their village is so impressive. I hope Paul and I can take a little bit of advice from the colonists and learn a few self sustaining skills.
 

   

         Once we finished our tour of Jamestown we went home, cooked some dinner then had the coolest New Years Eve party ever!!  Okay it really wasn't super great, but we did go swimming before it got all too exciting to handle. We played in the pool with Sage for a little while and Paul and I played water volleyball with his mom. After the pool we watched a chick flick, paused it to watch the ball drop, gave each other a new years kiss, drank some sparkling cider, turned our movie back on, finished the movie then went to bed. Yay, Happy New Years! And we did all of that before Utah was at 11:00 PM. Thank goodness we were on the East Coast and had less time to wait. I was sure pooped by the time midnight rolled around.      

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... :)