Christmas 2012!

I’m playing blog catch up! This is a picture we took for Kyle’s family’s Christmas newsletter.  Kyle had a mustache starting after Thanksgiving.  He shaved it off a few weeks into the new semester.

We ordered train tickets to come home for Christmas back in October.  I was so excited to go home and see family that I reminded Kyle of our trip daily.  The day finally arrived!  We drove down to Utah on a Tuesday after school.  We picked up Ginny and then headed to Kent and Kate’s for our very short night.  Our train was scheduled to leave Salt Lake at 3:30am, and we were needing to be there by 2:30am. Since it’s an hour from Kent’s house to Salt Lake area, our alarm clock was set for midnight.  We made it safely onto the train and found seats.  Ginny sat in a seat across the aisle, and she was able to sit by herself the entire trip.  The train really is an enjoyable mode of transportation.  The seats were nice and big, and we had plenty of leg room.  We were scheduled to come into the Ottumwa, IA station by 9:00 am on Thursday, and ended up pulling into the station at 6:30 pm.  We were a little late.  There was a huge snow storm that hit the Midwest, which was typical.  The great thing about riding the train was that it was the only thing still moving.  Roads and airports had been shut down, so we felt pretty lucky.  Kyle will kill me for putting this on the blog, but this pretty much sums up our train ride.  Just hanging out, drinking juice boxes.  It really was a nice trip, a little long, but very nice.

We loved spending time with my family at my parents house in Chillicothe.  I loved hanging out with my sisters and brothers and all their adorable children.  Not to mention my parents.  Gosh, I love them all so much!  We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, I don’t remember all the fantastic gifts I got, but I do remember how fun it was to be with everyone.

The sisters and mom all had our nails done.

I loved hearing my Mama read books to her grandkids, Josh and Eli!

We headed up to Manchester to be with Kyle’s family that evening.  They had a full house since every sibling was there, again it was so much fun to see everyone.  All the kids had grown up so much!  We had a very pleasant Christmas.    Kyle got me a bunch of stuff for cake decorating.  I am always excited to have more crafty things.  He also played his trombone with his Dad, brother and nephew for the family talent show. The day after Christmas we went for family pictures.  It was probably the quickest, easiest family picture session we have ever been too.  During this family get together we had quite the epidemic of sickness.  Several of us got some pretty bad colds.

 

 

 

Kyle and I celebrated our two year anniversary while we were in Iowa. We went to lunch at Red Lobster, our favorite, and then spent the evening with Casey and Amber at a hockey game.  We had a lot of fun!

The return train ride was much quicker.  We were able to see Beth’s baby, James when we got back to Utah.  It was nice to get back home, though. We’re going home again this summer, so the count down is on!