The day before we took off, we resorted to opening a few of the presents we got each other, to not have to pack as much into the back of the truck for the blizzardy drive. Aaron's pretty excited here about the new hat I got him.
Opening Christmas presents early.. gotta love it!
Back at Dad's house: Every year, Santa's elves leave a letter to us kids in the mailbox, letting us know what time Santa is coming early in the morning so we should be asleep in bed. Family tradition, however, includes us hiding and watching Santa bring in the presents! Here's Melanie and Luke holding the letter from Santa on Christmas Eve
Christmas morning: Both Mia and Luke got little cars to zoom around on.
The family Christmas morning!
Gotta love the Christmas morning pics when we are ALL looking our best, straight outta bed at 6:00 am to watch Santa!
Christmas Day we went to my Uncle Bennett's house for dinner and games. This is one of my cousins, Celeste, wearing my shoes in the kitchen- it was hilarious!
Ahhhh little Mia playing with guns... so cute.
Silly Kent got ahold of my camera
I love little babies, and my littlest sister, Ali was the CUTEST thing ever, I could never put her down during the whole break! She's 6 months old and so smiley and happy, I miss those kids!
The boys playing games: from the second they woke up til they went to bed at night, all they talked about was Acquire. In fact, this particular day, my dad never even showered and stayed in his pajamas all day, it was hilarious! Dad just recently taught me and Val's husbands how to play Acquire and they, along with Kent are now hooked and that's all they talk about. However, it was so fun for me to see them getting along and how much fun Dad had with Aaron & Taylor. My Dad seemed so happy that me and Val had married so well. =)
So funny story:
On the drive back home to Utah, the weather was beautiful and clear- we couldn't have asked for better. However, we made our dinner and gas break in Burley, ID at Jack in the Box. The place was SO filthy- no t.p. in the bathrooms, trash on the floor everywhere, sticky countertops, and they were all out of soda!! The dumbest thing was that every customer would order a combo meal and be given a cup to get soda, and the employees wouldn't tell anyone there was no soda.. so they would all come back to the counter and complain. Get a freakin brain!! My wrap I ordered came with no lettuce, which I asked for later, then it showed up like 10 minutes later, after we were all done eating!! The whole restaurant was a joke....
THEN, we're probably 30 miles away after we left, and Taylor realizes his wedding band is missing!! Aaron said he remembered Tayler had it in the bathroom when he was washing his hands. So, we google and call up Jack in the Box and ask them to look in the bathroom for the ring. No luck.. so Taylor thinks he might have left it on the tray and threw it away! As gross as it was ( and funny to us), Taylor asks the dude on the phone if he would check in the trash. The kid on the phone was very polite and says sure, lets down the phone to start digging through the garbage when Taylor sits up, and finds his ring under his seat in the car!!! He tries to talk to the garbage-digging kid asap, but he's already looking in the trash!! We LAUGHED OUR HEADS OFF.. we were so mad at the restaurant, but wouldn't ever want them to go digging through their own garbage, cuz that's mean and we felt bad, but in a small way they deserved it! Taylor hung up and tried calling them back so we finally got ahold of someone else, who said they couldn't find the ring. As to not look like that whole call was a prank, Taylor just said thanks for looking and hung up. It was waaaay funny at the time, but maybe you had to be there...
We made it back to Utah safely and start pulling our garbage sacks filled with our stuff outta the truck when Taylor realizes a bag of his stuff had flown out... ohhhhhhhhh Taylor. Luckily we ended up finding it buried under other bags, so he lucked out twice on this trip!!!!
My studly cousin Bennett
Apparently Aaron and Ryan had once determined they could marry a girl that passes the test of being able to go on a road trip with the 2 of them.. We only drove probably 30 miles and whether or not I passed the test isn't even relevant.. cuz it's too late- we're already married! I did feel like I was sitting right in the middle of 2 of my brothers though in the car...
We went to the Frank Lloyd Wright architectural school the day after Thanksgiving and that was really interesting, especially since my knowledge of artwork and architecture is definitely lacking. But the weather the whole trip was SO nice.. I never imagined experiencing perfect weather in the beginning of December!
There were lots of statues outside and of course, we didn't know what many of them were.
Just messin around on the piano in one of the "living" rooms.
Ryan and Aaron by the statues, in front of the citrus groves
Ha, this picture was awesome.. it's hard to see but this is Aaron's Aunt Debbie and stepdad Steve behind her riding the Merry-go-round at the park/train station. They were pretty dang funny!
Aaron with Dad and stepmom Susan. Good times =)
Me and cute lil pregnant Tash (I swear I look more pregnant than her.. And I'm not!!) 
The boys, Jason (aka Burger King) and Ryan (with Tasha's shorts on) haha
