A Utah Christmas

Melanie's family all came out for christmas this year. It was nice to have them all out at the same time. They drove all the way from Arkansas, dodging and diving winter storm after storm and even drove through Wyoming to complete the 19 hour drive without stopping! They arrived on Christmas eve and we all went to Christmas Eve service at our church which was pretty funny

with all the little kids signing and the middle school kids attempting the Carol of the Bells with hand bells. We spent Christmas Eve opening our presents and then playing rock band on Brian's Wii. I think we spent half the week playing rock band - I think I'm going to try out for the church band since they're looking for a guitarist now...my rock band skills should help me out with that! On Christmas day we relaxed around the house and then went to a movie in Ogden later that evening. On our way back from the movie it started snowing very hard and within about 5 minutes you couldn't tell where the road was or wasn't. I think we got about 9 or 10 inches of snow that

made it nice and cold and icy. Friday, we all went to Park City.
We ate lunch on main street and walked around to a few shops...it was too cold to stay long, so we went to the Olympic Park and went throught museum. There were a few ski jumpers from Norway who were practicing on the freestyle ramps, but other than that there wasn't a whole lot happening up there. On Saturday, we tool Laura to the airport to fly home for her GRE test and to see Spencer. The rest of the weekend was pretty eventless and pretty nice to just relax before going back to work. Mel's Parents and Brian started the drive back to Arkansas on Tuesday morning, making a pit-stop in Moab to check out the sites of Arches and Canyonlands and then headed back over the Rockies of Colorado. It was great to have the Smith's out for Christmas and are looking forward to everyone else visiting over the winter. We hope you all had as great a Christmas and New Year as we had!