White Christmas!

Let me begin by saying that I don't think I have ever anticipated a Christmas as much as I did in 2010. My mom was able to have her whole family together on Christmas. That is no easy feat as any of you with large families know. Travis came up with the idea to surprise my mom. We emailed all the other kids in my family. In the end we decided to tell my dad so he could help lay the ground work. After months of planning and saving. Travis, the kids and I set off. We drove, I know, we are crazy!. The kids did a lot better than I had anticipated, with no more fighting than usual. It helped immensely that we have a DVD player in the van. We made a short visit with our amazing friends the Paschals in Utah and were able to attend the annual Christmas concert featuring David Archuleta. We really enjoyed it. Sadly, we had to bid our farewells to Todd, Adrian, and the boys and headed up to Rexburg. My brother set it up so my mom was downstairs and we could sneak in. Then he got her to come up. It was priceless and soooo my mom. She came up to look for something and didn't even notice six people sitting on her couches! My dad began to laugh and Cole finally had to direct her attention our way. She was speechless; that doesn't happen often. Needless to say, she was surprised and happy. Little did she know, it would happen again twice more as my brother's family came later in the week.

This is us setting off. Gotta love Westin's face. He is such a poser.

This was our first real rest stop in north Florida. It takes forever to drive out of Florida if you want to go West!

New Mexico was pretty...at first.

Then it got cold, and snowy and colder and snowier!. As we neared AlbaTurkey, (as Amelia would say) there is a mountain pass. It began snowing on our way up and didn't let up until we hit the bottom and it turned into rain. It took 2 hours to what should have been about 40 minutes! It was scary, there were cars spun out on the sides. We found out later they had to close the pass and cancel school all over that area! To top it off, the desk clerk in our crappy Days Inn was non too helpful. Luckily, the bad weather only lasted the morning as we drove into Colorado.

This is the SW corner of Colorado, near Cortez.

This of course it the Salt Lake City Temple for our Church. I love Temple Square at Christmas time! The boys didn't get to see it, they had an outing with their uncle Jordan to the movies while we went to the concert.

The lights on Temple Square are magical! You can see the top of Travis and Todd's heads. It was cold but we had so much fun. We ran into a friend that used to live in FL, too.

I like that this picture makes the lit trees look like sparklers.

Sorry these pictures are so big, I borrowed them from the MoTab's FB page and I don't know how to shrink them. The one above is the stage in the Conference Center in SLC. They designed it so beautifully for these performances. The lighting was awesome, too, changing with every song to set the mood.

And, of course, David Archuleta. I must admit, I had never really heard him sing until that night. He impressed me. His speaking voice was so small compared to when he sings. He had a Josh Groban quality to his voice.

Alex, Westin, and Ethan

Once we made it to Idaho and surprised my mom, the kids dashed out to the snow. We had so many great family members contribute to our snow clothes needs. We ended up with everything but boots. My mom took care of those. They were in and out of the snow every couple of hours. They loved the snow!

Amelia

We did so much I will definately have to break up our amazing Christmas adventure in to many posts.