Holiday Fun

Hello there friends and family! We hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The holidays are always such a fun time and we loved hearing from so many of you. We were grateful to have Barr's parents with us in time for the Christmas festivities. It was a little Christmas miracle as the first blizzard that hit Denver shut down the airport on the day they were to fly to see us. They were re-ticketed but not until Christmas afternoon! There was no way we were going to let them miss all the fun of Christmas Eve and morning so we started praying VERY hard! The next day they spent almost 12 hours at the airport waiting in ticketing and security lines to finally make the only flight to Columbus on the standby list. With thousands of people still stranded for days at the airport it was another confirmation that God hears and answers prayers.

We learned about some fun traditions they do here in Dublin around Christmas time. Santa personally called each of our kids to make sure they were being good. Because he knew to tell Brittany to keep taking care of Max, and that Brigham wanted a scooter, and reminded Ben to share his Gameboy more, he had Ben re-believing in him this year. The night of the phone call Ben said, "This is the best day of my life". The magic kept coming when we had an elf from the North Pole visit us during the month of December. This is a tradition that started in one of the elementary schools years ago and has snowballed like you wouldn't believe. Every family has an elf that watches them for Santa. Our elf's name was Holly and she would come alive every night, rummage through candy dishes and leave special notes for the kids. They became very attached to her. Brittany made her a special bed, and always left her plenty of food, books, and toys. As it got closer to Christmas Brigham would often break down crying because he knew Holly would have to return to the North Pole with Santa. He felt so sad for her that she would miss his birthday, and watching them grow up, so he would pray every night that Christmas would never come! Thankfully that prayer wasn't answered, but all the kids came to grips with "reality" that Holly was needed by her elf family and would return to us next December.

Residual memories of Christmas day leave impressions of fun, laughter, joy, and love...but are blurred. The time went by much too quickly. The day after Christmas Becky caught an early flight to Cincinnati with the hopes of flying standby to Salt Lake City for her sister, Heather's, wedding the next day. She ended up flying to San Francisco where the previously 3 open flights to SL were now overbooked because of other airport delays and problems. Thankfully her brother-in-law, Rick, was with her and they even considered renting a car to either drive all the way to SLC or at least to another airport to try their luck there. Luckily there were no cars available and they missed the shuttle because after over 15 hours of being in airports they miraculously caught the last flight to Salt Lake. Air travel around the holidays is always an adventure!

All that stress was so worth it though to have all 6 siblings there in the temple for Heather's wedding and to finally get to meet Colby. It was truly a vacation for Becky to not have any kids with her (even though I love my kids!). Like the rest of the country though, we all got to experience that awful 24-hour flu. It hit the bride and groom on their wedding day--how unfair is that, and just moved on to the rest of us.

Becky flew home the same day Barr's parents returned to Denver. Then we left to Cincinnati for a second wedding reception. The reception was first class fun with a fantastic dinner and dance. We even talked Ben into joining us on the dance floor (which was no small task). The only bummer was that Becky had to leave early as her round with the flu hit her with full force. On New Year's eve it was Barr's turn along with Brittany and Brooke. We know many people make a New Year's resolution to lose weight, but we wouldn't recommend the way we did it! :)

Despite the illnesses most of us experienced, it was good to be with family to celebrate the birth of our Savior and a few days later, the wedding of Heather and Colby. Now we're back in the flow of life with work, school, and preparing for birthdays later in January. Here's some pictures of experiences over the last month or so.
















Ben, Brittany, and Brigham with Holly















Opening up pajamas on Christmas Eve















The traditional Christmas morning picture on the stairs...















At Heather's reception in Cincinnati















Brittany at gymnastics