Back From The Mainland!

We're back from the mainland! We had a fantastic Christmas vacation in Utah with our family and friends. Our parent's houses smelled of pine, wassail, and rich fudge. We loved sleeping with cold noses in comfy, down comforter-topped beds. We soaked up the time playing with our nieces and nephews and catching up with our siblings.



We flew up to Idaho to visit Kearstin and Warren.  Warren was gracious enough to take care of our yearly dental procedures and we got to watch Tyler's Christmas program at "Butte View Elementary".  Can you believe they named a school that?! Ha! Anyway...

Spent some time visiting with Grandma Willis - the most perpetually positive, cheerful, and delightful person in the whole world.

Had a family dinner and sleepover at Kami's house.  We listened to Kami and her Mozart-esque fingers bang beautiful sounds out of the piano.  Notice my mom's face in the picture below.  She's a proud mama.

And the next day we woke up to an arctic blizzard.

We got together with some of my very best friends from my mission.  I love them :)

and visited the Carl Bloch exhibit at the Museum Of Art

Had our annual Christmas Eve Part at the Willis's where Donna made us all sing karaoke this year. Haha! She
 made the girls sing "Santa Baby".  I told Donna that when I fantasized about singing that song it didn't include a karaoke machine and my extended relatives...She didn't care and made us sing it anyway.  The guys got to sing something normal like Feliz Navidad. haha.

On New Year's Eve we had our annual party with the Summerhays and the Morgans. This year we had a Mardi Gras themed Murder Mystery with Cafe Rio catering and hilarious entertainment. It was the best New Year's Party we've had yet.





After the mystery was solved, we  poured the sparkling cider (because we're Mormon and we're cool like that).  We shared some of our resolutions and ended a very splendid evening. 


In between all of our shenanigans we had lots of fun taking pictures of family and friends. I visited Lindsay in Texas and had a blast playing with Grace and snuggling the heaven out of my newest niece, Jane. You can see all of the pictures here. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!