Christmas Around the World

My sister is on the International Folk Dance Team at BYU and they are absolutely amazing. They put on their big Christmas show this past weekend and I decided to take Annabelle to it. Since Sarah is still nursing, she had to come as well. I dropped Jillian off at a neighbor's house where she would stay until Michael got off work. She was very teary-eyed when I told her goodbye. Once we got to Provo, we met up with my sister and walked around campus. I haven't done that since I was there going to school 7 years ago. It was great.


The show was absolutely amazing, as it always is. Annabelle really enjoyed the show. It was very kid friendly. Way to go, Amber. You were AMAZING!

Here we are waiting for the how to start.


The beautiful Amber!

We had a great day. Then things got bad. We stayed at my aunt's house that night and about 3 in the morning, Annabelle started throwing up. She threw up the rest of the night and on the drive back home. I feel so bad for my aunt, my dad, and my grandma's husband, who all got sick as well, I think because of their being in contact with Annabelle. She got better about 12 hours after she first got sick.

Then early Monday morning, I was sick throwing up for about 12 hours, then felt better, and that night, Jillian was sick for about 12 hours. It was a miserable start to this week. Michael also got sick, but I think he had something closer to the flu. Fortunately, he's feeling better and we're hoping we're done with sickness for a while.

The Christmas trees

Last year as I was putting up the Christmas that Michael and I bought for our first Christmas together, I decided that it was the last year for this tree and I would take advantage of the sales after Christmas and buy a new one for the following year. My reasoning for doing this is that this first tree of ours is pretty dinky and small and it leans heavily to one side. I'll admit I was a little embarrassed to have it show through out front window. As planned, the day after Christmas last year, I bought a new 7.5 ft tree for 50% off. This tree is now our upstairs, nice tree and the smaller tree is downstairs for the kids to call their own.

On the day that I was putting up the kid's tree, Annabelle wanted to help decorate but a friend came over to see if she could play and she opted to do that instead of put up the tree. She said she'd help me with the upstairs tree. So Jillian and I were left to decorate the tree. She had a blast putting the ornaments all over the tree.

The next day, it was time for the nice tree. I was super excited to see how this on would turn out. Because it's much bigger and taller, it took more than twice as long to fluff out the branches. Annabelle again got invited to play with friends and I didn't let Jillian help me too much with this one, so it was just me. When Michael turned into our driveway after work that day and saw this magnificent tree peeking out through our front window, he thought he was at the wrong house. I am so glad that I got this new tree because I LOVE it!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday. We visited Michael's parents. It was a little stressful for me because Sarah wouldn't let anyone hold her but me and Jillian was suddenly being very clingy as well. If I wasn't in the same room as Jillian, she would tart freaking out. It was quite frustrating at times.

Thanksgiving morning, I ran the Turkey Trot with Michael and his brother. Considering I hadn't been running in a week and a half, I did pretty well. And of course, Thanksgiving dinner was absolutely wonderful!

The rest of the time was spent visiting and playing. We also played pickleball, I saw the final Twilight movie with my mother-in-law, went for a Christmas stroll, played on the wii,, watched lots of football, and played board games. It was a fun trip. Thanks Robert and Cynthia for letting us visit.

Water park

We had a very interesting start to our Thanksgiving holiday this year. Instead of driving straight to Michael's parents' house (a 7 hour drive in good weather), we decided to drive 5 hours and stay at a hotel in Billings that had an indoor water park, including 2 three-story high water slides. We wanted to give our a kids a new experience and remind them that even though we don't let them buy ice cream from the ice cream truck or spend change on candy from a vending machine, we still love them and are pretty cool parents.

Michael had a lunch meeting and Annabelle had school on Tuesday, so we left early that afternoon. We didn't have great weather for driving and soon after we left, Sarah spit up quite a bit. Then 2 minutes before pulling up to the hotel, Jillian threw up pretty badly. She tends to have motion sickness. Not to mention it was way past all the kids bedtime. Needless to say, we were pretty exhausted when we got to the hotel. But as soon as Jillian got cleaned up, the kids were going crazy. They couldn't calm down. They were so excited to be at the hotel and go swimming in the morning. It took them forever to go to sleep and Annabelle was coughing all night due to a cold. Since we were all in the same room, nobody got a lot of sleep. The next morning, we ate some complimentary breakfast and got right to the pool. It was awesome!

Sarah wasn't quite sure what to make of it and Jillian had one tantrum, but overall, it was really fun. The slides were really cool. They wrapped around and twisted and even curved outside. Annabelle couldn't get enough of them. One of them was perfect for her. You rode a tube down the slide and you could go with 2 people or by yourself. Annabelle started by going with Michael, but was soon doing it by herself.

In addition to the slides, there was also a wave pool, hot tub, activity pool with a basketball hoop and lily pads to walk on, and a huge water park. I'm glad we decided to stop there. The 2 hour trip from Billings to my in-laws' house was great because everyone slept almost the whole time.

Sarah was crying because she was so tired when we got to the hotel that Michael put her in the corner. Don't worry, he only let her sit there long enough to get the picture.

Along the hallway as you walk from your hotel room to the pool, there was a video game with this gun and Michael decided we needed a picture of Annabelle holding the gun.

 

A view of the slides from the freeway.