A Utah Christmas

This year was the first year that we have had to travel for Christmas. It made us realize how spoiled we have been all of these years living in the place that was "home base" for both of our families and having everybody else come to us. While it did require quite a bit more planning and preparation, it was totally worth it to spend Christmas with family. 

We began our 14 hour drive early in the morning with hopes to make it as far as we possibly could before stopping for the night. 

The drive across Nebraska and Wyoming proved to be just as ugly and boring as I imagined.

As it turns out, our kids are pretty awesome travelers and Scott is a machine when it comes to driving long distances.  (Imagine him standing outside the car with a stop watch threatening to leave anyone who wasn't back from the bathroom in the allotted time. Okay he wasn't that intense...but almost.) We pulled into my parent's driveway at 9:00 pm having made the entire drive in 14.5 hrs with only 3 stops along the way. Pretty impressive if you ask me. We stayed in Utah for two full weeks and had a blast spending every minute we could with friends and family.

I have already mentioned some of the things we did in Utah and I don't plan on sharing every boring detail of our two weeks, but here were some of the highlights (aka: the things we got pictures of).

Marilyn was kind enough to invite us back for another year of her Santa Christmas party. Our kids were super excited this year and I was proud of how far we have come since last year. Not a single one of my kids was scared of Santa this year!! I hardly knew what to do when they all calmly walked up, sat on his lap, and answered his questions when it was their turn. Miles asked Santa for an excavator and dump truck, Brynn asked for a toy kitchen, and Mason asked for a Lego Technic set. It was a great way to kick off our Christmas in Utah. Thanks Marilyn and family!

As always Grandma's Sleepover was highly anticipated by all of the kiddos. I'll be completely honest that this night proved to be a difficult night emotionally for me in regards to missing Ellie. There's no easy explanation why this particular tradition brought such a harsh reminder of Ellie's absence, but it was a hard night for me and unfortunately that made it a little harder for me to fully enjoy our dinner at Outback or back at Chris and Kacie's house for movie (boys), talking (girls), and games (where girls beat boys). But it still proved to be a pretty good night.

 This was when Mason noticed a smudge on his shirt and decided to pout and throw a fit for the rest of the night about it. Awesome.

The next morning we attempted our family ski trip... you already know how that turned out.

We were able to get together a couple of times with Scott's family that was in town. One night all of us adults were able to sneak away for a dinner together. Another afternoon we all got together at Scott's parent's house where we enjoyed a talent show showcasing all of the kids followed by a Christmas shepherd's dinner.

During our two weeks in Utah I spent a lot of time catching up with different groups of friends (high school, nursing school, coworkers, neighbors, Nu Skin, etc.) over breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I think I ate out more during those two weeks than I had during the entire year! I am so grateful for the many wonderful lasting friendships I have been blessed with.

Stacie, Tiffany, and Katie, some of my OHS '03/Cascade 3rd Ward girlfriends.

The most memorable thing, by far, was the day I was able to go visit my dear friend Jennifer and meet sweet little Elisabeth face to face for the first time. I felt a little closer to heaven with her in my arms. It is nothing short of a miracle that she is alive and doing as well as she is and for that I am very grateful.

Spending time in Utah with all of our family and friends was wonderful. I am so glad that making the drive in one day was totally doable and I don't think we'll hesitate to make the drive whenever we need to in the future. As much fun as we had, we were all happy to return home to Omaha.

Hale Family Pictures

With the constant change and growth of our family, we haven't bothered getting professional pictures taken for the last 7 years. So for Christmas we all gave my parents the gift of updated family pictures. As with any family pictures, not all of the little kids were completely on board with being posed and smiling on command, but I was pleasantly surprised with how great they all turned out.

 Truthfully I kind of hate how perfect our little family picture turned out because I'm not quite ready to have a family picture without Ellie in it, but I really do love this picture.

Elf on the Shelf

The kids were THRILLED when our elf Zippy returned on December 1st. This year Zippy got a little more mischievous and kept us pretty entertained with all of the things we caught him doing. A few of the kids' favorites were when he was in our printer making copies of himself, when he got sick with the rest of our family, and when he was suctioning Ellie's trach bear. 

By far the greatest surprise was the morning we were leaving for Utah and the kids searched and searched the house to say goodbye to Zippy before we left, but they couldn't find him anywhere. A little disappointed, we got in the car only to find that he had jumped in our car the night before so he could come along on our trip to Utah and stay with us until Christmas.

While in Utah we experienced a little bit of drama surrounding our dear elf. One day Uncle Beetle clumsily bumped into our elf who was hanging from the light and then jokingly announced, "The magic is gone!" (if you touch your elf they will loose their magic). Brynn was DEVASTATED and was instantly sobbing uncontrollably. She loves Zippy so so much and the thought that he would loose his magic and never come back was more than her tender little heart could handle. It took Brandon making an emergency call to Santa to explain it was he who had accidentally bumped into Zippy and to please not let him loose his magic because of it and a lot of reassuring to get her to calm down. The next day we found Zippy and all was well.....until the week after Christmas. You see the elves return to the North Pole on Christmas Eve and we don't see them again until next December. So you can imagine Brynn's surprise when on December 31 she was looking for something in our room and decided it was probably in the box that was tucked away on the top shelf of the bookcase with several other things piled on top of and around it, only to pull it down and open it to find....an elf. Or as she walked upstairs and sadly told Grandma, "I found a dead elf in a box". She quickly started running through several possible scenarios with my mom including what she feared the most, that maybe when Zippy was flying home to the North Pole on Christmas Eve he lost his magic from when Brandon touched him and he fell in the street and someone scooped him up in a box and mailed him to us (it was an amazon box she found him in, so naturally it had to have been mailed to us). My mom tried her best to counter Brynn's concerns by saying maybe Zippy just got really tired and fell asleep in a box. After a surprisingly long absence from the conversation, Scott and I came to hear Brynn's story. We had her take us to show us the box. Sure enough there was an elf that looked like Zippy inside, but there was something else that Brynn hadn't seen before...a note. We pulled out the note (which appeared to be hastily written) and read it. It was from Santa telling us that this little elf had been waiting all year to be adopted by a family, but hadn't found a family yet. Zippy had told Santa what a nice family we were and so he wondered if we would adopt this elf. I've never seen more excited kids as I saw when my kids realized this meant next year we would have not one but TWO elves at our house. YAY! We named our new elf Bella which activated her magic so she could return to the north pole with all of the other elves until next Christmas. We can hardly wait for next December!!

Winter Sports

Back in December our friends, the Cooks, invited us to go to the ribbon cutting of ConAgra's ice skating rink downtown. We debated whether we should go since two of our kids were starting to get sick, but once the kids heard about it they were so excited there was no way I could say no. I had pretty low expectations going into the night, hoping that the kids would at least last long enough to make it worth the effort of going. It turned out to be one of the funnest nights I have had in a long time. Mason took off without hesitation around the rink and later told us he had contemplated doing a "triple toe" (a little skating jargon he remember from the Olympics), but decided he might not be able to land it. Brynn wasn't the least bit hesitant to try skating on her own but in the end she preferred holding hands to help soften her fall when she got off balance. Miles was happy to just hang from our arms while we pulled him around between our legs, but he sure got excited to see a zamboni in action. As I skated around with blisters forming on my feet and my back aching from bending over Miles I felt genuinely happy for the first times in months. This was just the kind of night I have looked forward to since I started having babies. A night when we didn't have to leave anyone home with a baby-sitter and no one had to sit out because they were too little. We were able to have fun doing something together as a family.

A few weeks later, in Utah, we decided to try our hand at another winter sport...Sledding. We went the day after Christmas when there had been a considerable about of snow, but as you can see from the condition of Cascade hill, we weren't the only ones who had the idea to go sledding. That did stop us all from having a good time going off the jumps others left behind. 

We were two for two and feeling pretty confident going into our third and final winter sport - skiing. This year, my parents decided it was time to teach all of the grandchildren how to ski, so the morning after Grandma's sleepover they took us all (except Andrew, Kendall, and Colson) skiing at Snowbird.  I had high hopes that this was going to be the first of many wonderful family ski trips, but it didn't turn out to be quite as magical as I had dreamed. Skiing can be a little uncomfortable and difficult when you are getting on all of the gear and hiking to the lift, especially with 8 children who are just learning how to ski. Unfortunately one of my children is highly opposed to being uncomfortable or having to do anything that takes effort so he/she, who shall remain nameless, made getting going absolutely miserable for all of us. Scott and I had to spend so much time trying to help said child, that we weren't able to give Miles enough help causing him to loose patience and decide he had had enough and would rather take a nap in the car than ski. So I got to enjoy my much anticipated ski day in the car while Miles slept. After taking his time to warm up and have a good attitude Mason had a blast riding the lift and skiing down the mountain.. until it was time to walk back to the car...then it was all drama again. (oops, so much for the anonymous child). Brynn was partnered up with Grandma for the day and didn't get too adventurous, but had a good time staying close to Grandma. At the end of the day I was super embarrassed and disappointed by how the day had gone for our family and decided the Murrays will be opting out of any future family ski days.

I guess as with anything, you win some and you loose some.