Fabulous Holiday's

We have had such a wonderful end to 2007 and then an equally wonderful beginning to 2008. We spent Christmas with my family. We all made it home and had a few days together, meals, games, good laughs and some serious talks too. But it was all fun. We also shared a cold between us all. Started with Dad and drifted down from there with Roger coming home on Wed with it. Brayden and I came home on thurs night and had friday to do laundry and left again Saturday at lunch time headed for Provo Utah to meet Noah and Becky and Kevin. We had planned a full action packed two weeks. Most are aware that Becky and I are cousins and we both have been married to our wonderful husbands for 12 yrs. We all went to Russia in 2006 and brought our boys home. Kevin is 6 months older than Brayden. We wanted the two boys to meet and connect with each other, we hope to accomplish this every year at least once.

We drove on some pretty nasty roads to get to Provo, so it took us a full hour extra on time. We got there and Becky and Noah and Kevin met us at the door to let us in to our hotel room. We introduced the boys and encouraged them to hug. Brayden was faster on the uptake on that than Kevin was, but they did hug and had an instant bond. In fact when we got up to the third floor and headed down the hallway, they ran down that hallway squealing to beat all. It started some dogs barking in the unit next to us. :-) We had a wonderful suite, it had two queen bedrooms with master baths, one on each side of the living room, dining table and chairs, full kitchen. We took three main meals between us, breakfast was included with the room. Sunday we went to meeting with Bobby and had a nice time there. We then returned to the room had lunch and went sledding. There was a really nice park there in town that had a large bowl scooped out of the middle with really neat slopes on the sides, some more steep than others. We had a complete blast sledding. After sledding for a couple of hours, we went back to the hotel and dressed the boys in swim clothes and sent them to the pool with their daddy's. Becky and I had a little down time and then joined them at the pool. They were sooo close to complete crashes, no naps and a late night the night before. We decided to feed them early and hope for the best. I made supper and we fed them after their showers. They played real good while we ate our supper and then we sent them for stories by daddy's. I will put the video of Brayden on here, its really funny!!! Soooo tired, but not giving in. Monday we headed for Salt Lake to the Imax theatre and then the zoo had a real neat light display for the holidays. Brayden was scared during the theatre show, it was Santa versus the Snowman, all animated, but Brayden was worried. Part of it was that it was 3D so it seemed to come right out at us. I took his 3D glasses off and tried to explain stuff to him he calmed down and made it through. The zoo was a bigger hit, except Mama wasn't dressed warm enough. Both the boys were in snow pants, coats, hats, boots the works. Mama wasn't smart enough to bring my snow pants or boots along, so I was just wearing my coat and gloves. Oh well, it worked out ok. After we finished at the zoo, we tried to find a place for supper, but all the restaurants we tried had 1 hr to 1 1/2 hr waits. We went back to our room and finished off with soup I had brought. Everyone was glad actually to bypass the whole restaurant thing, we might have had a real public meltdown. We let the boys stay up till 10:30 as it was the last night together. They played and played. Altho as parents we have to admit that they did get pretty familiar with each other and with that came the not sharing toys well and some very minor issues. Its hard to explain to a 3 yr old that goodbye means a long time sometimes. They both asked about each other the next day and seemed to miss each other. We are so glad they met and had such a good connection. We will let the videos and pics tell the main story.

We are back home and somewhat back to normal. Its been a little tough to get the schedule back on track. Its even been alittle tough for Brayden to learn to play alone some of the time. He had two full weeks of lots of people willing and eager to give attention. Its actually so nice to sleep in our own bed lots of nights in a row. In fact on the way home, Brayden was asking about his dump truck bed. He really seemed to look forward to sleeping in it again. Now if we can just get him over his cold we will be doing good. He woke up from his nap yesterday with real congestion and coughing. We have been keeping him dosed with his meds and he is doing ok. He is playing well, so he's not lethargic or anything, just a bit slower than normal. If all goes well we won't end up with an ear infection and he will get well quickly.

We wish everyone a wonderful new year!! Don't forget to comment or just let us know you stopped by to visit.