Road Trip, Christmas and the House

We had quite an eventful Christmas with our drive to Washington. The weather on the way up was pretty bad.  We had to go through Pocatello because I-84 was closed through Snowville. Then we had to drive really slow through the Columbia Gorge. The kids were troopers though. Luckily Costco had a DVD player to replace our broken one or we would have been in deep trouble. Here are a few pics from the last few weeks.

Here is Coby in the car. He played with his feet most of the way to Washington. I guess I'm glad he was entertained by something. What a happy boy.

Talon and Kaleb found an empty wrapping paper roll. I'm not sure how it got in the car, but they split in half and played sword-fighting for a while. It was pretty funny.

This is a picture from the drive. The wind was blowing like crazy when we got to the Blue Mountains. It wasn't snowing much, thank goodness, but the wind was a little scary.

Here is a picture just out the window of the car.  It's the Columbia River surrounded by snow.  I thought it was gorgeous.  

When we got to the Columbia Gorge, there was about 18 inches of snow on the ground and about 6 inches on the road. The last 70 miles of the trip we had to go 30mph. We weren't sure if we were going to make it to Washington before Santa did. But all was well and we made it. Phew!! 

I thought these trees covered in snow were so beautiful.  Josh and I were amazed through this part of the drive at how gorgeous everything was all covered in snow.

On Christmas day, it snowed flakes the size of silver dollars. This was a rare treat because it hardly snows in Vancouver anyway, so to see it on Christmas day was amazing.

Here are the kids with Papa waiting to open gifts.

Josh and I got matching aprons (for the house) that say, "NO! I'm the boss." Although we all know who is really the BOSS. (Ha ha...Love you Josh!)

We had so much family in town for my sisters wedding (which I don't have pictures of) that my mom decided to do a family dinner on Sunday, Dec. 28th. It was so fun. We had tons of people there from both sides. What a great night! We are all so scattered that we don't get to see each other much. I even got to spend time with my cousin Matthew whom I haven't seen for over 10 years.

Here are Uncle Ray, Aunt Charlotte and Cousin Juliana.

Coby and my beautiful cousin Mercedes.

When we got home, we had another Christmas with my in-laws. They brought the gifts to our house and we had lunch, opened presents and did a family picture. We all had so much fun!

Kaleb and Talon in the snow bibs they got for Christmas. That's going to make playing in the snow much more fun.

Coby got this big stuffed fish from Uncle Chet. He and Grandma are checking it out.  

When we got back from vacation, they had the inside walls of our house built, the trusses on and part of the sheathing on the roof.  It was a Christmas Miracle!