The Pre-Christmas Trip

Well, we survived a trip down to SLC and Tooele this past weekend. Sort of a "dry-run" for our Chrsitmas Trip. For those that don't know, we just bought a new car. Our "big car" as well call, the Mercury Grand Marquis began having some front end problems. We then stopped driving it altogether when we noticed pieces of metal hanging down in the front. I'm sure we could have had it fixed, but with 216,000 miles on the car, we really didn't want to sink any more money into it (like we did about year ago, to the tune of $1100. And I bought the car for only $1800!) So we bit the bullet and bought ourselves a 2005 Nissan Altima. We got a really great deal on it ($6500) though it has 75,000 miles on it. But we figured we needed something to last at least two-three more years, and we were confident we found ourselves a vehicle that fit the bill. Plus, it is quite a bit bigger than our Sentra so there is a lot more room (Lily isn't laying on top of Owen in the backseat). And the gas mileage is just as good.

So we made some stops in Salt Lake to Joe's Crab Shack with Grampa and Grandma Higham, Auntie Collette and Ryan and Auntie Maggie and Layla. Then we were off to Tooele, where we watched BYU lose in the Las Vegas. While I'm sad to see a Utah team lose, I'm not that heartbroken. If any team deserves to lose, it's BYU and their obnoxious fans! Unfortunatley , the Jazz lost as well.

We spent the night and then went to church with Grampa and Grandma Nash. Hunter, Olivia and Uncle Chase and Auntie Luz showed up too, (I guess Hunter's complaining about his "stupid ward" got to them and they decided to go to Grandma's ward instead). Auntie Chelsea showed up as well.

We then hung out at Grandma's house, ate some roast and played "Pirates of the Caribbean." Then we made the long trip back home. But not before we got some pictures of us playing on the floor!










We wanted to get a nice picture of the kids together, but after about 10 minutes of telling them to "put your hands down!" or "Don't stick your tongue out!" and "open your eyes!" we just finally took some pictures and this one turned out to be the best of the bunch. Oddly enough, it was Owen, at almost 8 months old who was the easiest to work with. His four year-old and nine year-old cousins were the trouble makers!
We finally got home and unloaded the car. We managed to get in some Christmas shopping while we were down there. Owen got an early Christmas present in the form of a new bath tub. His old one is getting just too small for him. So this morning, we couldn't help but take a picture of him playing in the tub. We couldn't get him to look into the camera, he was just having too much fun splashing around.





We finally finished up our Christmas shopping and present wrapping tonight. We're excited to see Owen open up his presents. As we found out tonight he loves wrapping paper and empty boxes. Had we known that before we could have saved ourselves the money we spent on the little jungle gym we bought him and just had some empty boxes wrapped up to give him. Oh well. Merry Christmas everyone!