Christmas

Ryan invited the whole family to spend Christmas at his house on the mountain.  At first the thought of a two day 22 hour drive was a little daunting, and flying with four kids, winter clothes, and Christmas presents was even less appealing.  But after thinking it over we were very excited to see everyone and spend a Christmas with some real snow.

We drove to El Paso with Grandma Mindy on the Monday after the weekend of Brayden's baptism.  We spent the rest of the day in El Paso doing a little last minute Christmas shopping.  Knowing the second leg of the trip would be about 14 hours with a winter storm forecast, and not wanting to arrive on iced Utah roads late at night, I went to sleep early in the evening so that we could start our drive at about three in the morning.  There was snow on the ground when we arrived the next afternoon, but the roads ended up being OK.

Ryan and Nathan were there when we arrived.  Ben had planned to be there, but work scheduling issues ended up keeping him flying with Southwest the whole time we were there.  The Morris's also didn't end up being able to make it down from Idaho, but it didn't put a damper on the vacation. There were several inches of wet snow on the ground and the kids spent a few hours working on snowmen, but were happy to come inside before long.  

Ryan's house was a great vacation spot.  I had wondered how exactly a family Christmas would work at an executive bachelor pad without a toy room, but it ended up being perfect.  Ryan's roommates were all gone for the holidays and we had the run of the house.  The house is huge and and we had the basement to ourselves.  In the basement, we took one large room, Grandma Mindy another (with Kylee and Brayden on the floor of the big walk-in-closet), Nathan lived in the third, and a fourth went unused.

Christmas Eve we continued our family tradition of opening pajamas and the kids made cookies for Santa.

Christmas Day

playing intense Kinect

dress up

lots of lego building

Christmas day we all drove up to Salt Lake for a soup dinner with Grandma Mindy's cousin Cathy where we got to catch up with David Waldrop and the Walkers among others.

Nathan's Birthday

We all had a good time exploring, especially after Ryan showed the kids some of the house secrets.

We flew remote controlled helicopters in the large open living room and the kids watched a big screen movie on the twenty foot high living room wall with the new sound system Ryan had just replaced.

We got to catch up with Grandpa Caldwell and Nana in Las Cruces on our way back to San Antonio.