The Grim Meeper: Christmas in UT!!!

Ok this is going to be a big one considering that I’ve taken over a thousand pictures in the last month and half! I just missed everyone so much! I guess I felt the need to capture all our moments together since there not as frequent as they used to be. But we did get to spend three weeks just hanging out with our family.

We left Moscow the day after finals and arrived to SLC on Friday afternoon. Thanks to Grandma Anderson we were lucky enough to fly home. It was awesome because I’m not sure we would have made it home driving with a newborn and Owen. But they both did amazing on the plane. It was only an hour flight. But anytime we get Owen to sit still for longer than a second we consider it a success! When we arrived at the airport Owen thought he had died and gone straight to heaven. He was hilarious!!! He kept going up to all the people in the airport pointing and screaming "Plane…plane!" To be fair there was a plane; additionally there were only about thirty other people in the airport besides us. So it wasn’t too hard for him to get the news out there.

We had a very eventful first weekend back. Lots and lots of catching up! But the best part was Mason and his new cousin Max were both blessed that Sunday. Michael gave Mason the most beautiful blessing. For me it is such an amazing moment as a wife and mother. It’s amazing to me that I have chosen such a wonderful and loving father for my children. You can definitely hear in Michaels voice as he is blessing our children that not only does he love them, but he also has a strong love for our Father in Heaven as well. This, for me, is what makes this life wonderful. I cannot even put in to words how grateful I am for our little family. After 4 years of marriage I’m more convinced than ever that Michael is my very favorite!!!! I think Michael would agree that all we ever wanted growing up was to have a family of our own. I know I’ve heard him say on more than one occasion that he was more excited to be a Dad than a Husband, and he is both. He’s the Dad that is excited when he gets done doing his homework at 4am and finds his boys in our bed. He just wants to cuddle him back down even though its 4am. I love how much he loves our kids and so thankful he’s able to be the one to give them such wonderful blessing from their Heavenly Father.

We were very lucky to have all our loved ones at the Church. I think there were about 12 other guys in the blessing circle beside Mike. So it was good times and a lot of fun to see all of our friends and family.

The rest of Christmas break was totally chaos . Between all of the Christmas activities and trying to visit friends it was pretty busy to say the least. Owen ate it up though he was so excited to see all of the cousins. And even knows some of their names now. It’s so adorable especially when we face-time with everyone and he calls everyone kel. That is short for McKell, and he thinks that all of the Nelson girls have the same name. He also knows Ian, Elijah, lissa (Short for Melisa). Every day was a blast and made me realize how hard I have to work for us to have a life in ID. It was such a nice break from trying to think of new creative ways to keep Owen entertained throughout the week. Most of our activities in Idaho were discontinued when it started getting dark at 3pm bottomed at twenty below outside! SLC was seriously was so much fun. We’d wake up in the morning and play with cousins then drive to another cousin’s house to play. Then come back home and there would be more cousins! Both my kids were totally spoiled with love. Especially Mason…. Aunt lissa broke him! She was always cuddling him and was the first person to make him laugh. Mike and I still can’t get him to laugh that hard.

Between both sides of our family there was lots of Christmas fun. We went Logan for a couple of days to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. My parents went totally overboard with presents for the kids this year! They gave all the grandchildren jammies, ornaments, toys and more. They also got Mike and me a bunch of clothes. Between Grandma Anderson flying us home, and my parents pretty much giving us everything else, it ended up being a really big Christmas for us. We weren’t expecting to get so much stuff form both parents. However, we are really grateful for everything that was that was given.

Even though Owen is still little and doesn’t quite understand Christmas and Santa Claus yet. He is starting to understand opening presents. That made things a lot more exciting this year. Of course his favorite things were Candy and the 5 dollar cars he got from Wal-Mart.

After Christmas things calmed down a little bit, so obviously both my kids would need get sick so that we could end up spending the rest of the break with two grumpers. It’s never fun to have sick kids….. But it really terrible to have a sick new born. Mason was so stuffed up he could barely breathe, and that always scares me. So you know I wasn’t sleeping. It was nice that they got sick at a relatively good time, seeing as Mike was able to help a lot and so were both Grandma's and Melissa. It definately could have been a lot worse. Poor Mason ended up having two hot ears for the first time and had so much mucus that every time he ate it would all come right back up. I was doing a load of laundry every other hour. Or at least that’s it what it felt like… After we got Mason on an antibiotic he felt and looked so much better within hours. I'm so grateful for Doctors and modern medicine to help keep our babies healthy.

Both kids got better just in time for us to come back to our own little home that we’ve created in Moscow ID. It was defiantly a bitter sweet goodbye, considering that we always want to be close to our family and friends. However I have enjoyed having our own little home; where it’s just us against the world. We also really love all of the friends that we have made. I guess were lucky that we have friends and loved ones in both places. And that is how Christmas went down this year.

(Mikes note: We got back to Idaho at 11:00 pm, no heat was on in our house during the break, and our house was negative 50 degrees (in Anderson hyperbole land). We froze all night in a bed that didn't have any sheets on it because Meg wanted "Everything to be clean when we got back..."

...Frozen. End of note.)

Now it’s finally time to release all of the AMAZING PICTURES I’ve taken for the last month and a half!!!!

On our way home for Christmas!