Christmas 2015

We enjoyed a long Christmas break in Utah, Idaho, and Montana this year. In fact, Jared is still on break from school; he starts Tuesday. It has been a well deserved break because he finished another semester with straight A's. Our vacation started out a little rocky. Right when we were loading up the car to head to the Boston airport we were notified that our flight had been cancelled due to all of the snow in Denver (where we were going to have a layover). After a couple of stressful hours online and on the phone we learned that Southwest airlines would not be able to get us to Boise unless they flew us all over the country for 18 hours. So instead we settled on a flight that left from Hartford (yes!) and went to Salt Lake. And we were on the same flight as our friends, the Garbett's. It could not have worked out any better for us. Although we didn't get to see Jared's family as soon as we hoped, we were pleased to spend some more time with Jackie and Mark and family and see their new house. Brig and Benson played really well with all of their cousins this time and kept asking to spend more time with the Grandmas and Papas.  

Right before Christmas break the Angel Moroni got placed on the Hartford temple. We drive by the temple on the way to church every Sunday and its been for us watching the building process. 

Taking off! It is really difficult to get a picture of both of them.

When Brigham woke up in the morning he was so excited to see snow on the ground! He thought it was Christmas. We hit up a little sledding hill to play in the snow!

Benson is very musical. He loved sitting at the piano and pressing the keys very gently.

We managed to sneak away for a morning at the beautiful Payson temple. 

Later in the week we went to the Planetarium in SLC to meet with Benson's birthmom, H., and her dad. The boys loved pretending they were on the moon and Mars. Benson seemed to sense it was his special day and really put on a show for everyone. It was great to spend more time with H. and watch the boys interact with her.

The next day was spent with Brig's birthmom L. and her family. It's always an enjoyable time when we get together. We played at the Build a Bear shop and got to meet Santa in the mall. 

Brig, Ellie, Benson, Trey

Trey and Brig were pretty silly together :)

Uncle Ryan happened to be in Utah the same time as us and we rode with him to Idaho and went to church with his family. Then we headed to Boise for the big Weishaar Christmas gathering at Jeff and Angie's. One of the highlights was being able to do family sealings for 21 family members in the Boise temple. It was a large project this past year to get all of the names ready and all of the Weishaar siblings contributed. Unfortunately, I caught bronchitis again and wasn't able to go. 

 On Christmas Eve it was snowing and we were all getting a little cabin fever and so we went to the zoo. We were the only ones there and the animals put on quite a show for us, even while we threw snowballs at each other.

These two monkeys were inseparable.

Here's our night owl hanging out with the adults way past his bedtime. He kept saying he wanted to stay up with Grandma.

 We opened presents Christmas Eve. The boys were excited to finally open up their presents that we had crammed into our two suitcases.

See Brig's face? Stoked to get a huge bucket of cars.

 New Year's was spent in Fairfield with the Haynes crew. As always, Grandma prepared a smorgasbord of food for us everyday. It was a little cold but the kids had a blast lighting fireworks, sledding behind the 4 wheelers and helping Papa with chores.

Chopping ice to get water for the cows.

 Rachel, Jax, Brider and I went skiing at Great Divide on New Years day. I had a hard time keeping up those dare devils!

The kids got dumped out of the sled.

Benson feeding AJ and BJ the bulls.

Benson got a kick out of Pretty Paws. He'd squeal nervously when she'd get close but then start laughing. 

Christmas vacation was awesome and the boys did terrific with all of the traveling. It was exhausting at times though and we were glad to get home and sleep in our own beds. Connecticut had a nice treat in store for us with fluffy white snow the following day. It was the first snow we had seen in Connecticut.