Winter Wonderland

Like we do every year, we packed up our car and started our trek north to Utah for the Christmas holiday. Only this year, we decided to drive through the worst snow storm in the last 25 years for northern Arizona and southern Nevada. We decided against driving through Flagstaff and opted for the Las Vegas route instead, hoping for better weather. What we ran into was one of the worst snow storms I have ever seen. Growing up in Utah, I have seen a lot of snow, but the bad thing about this storm was the roads. Neither Arizona or Nevada really have the infrastructure in place to deal with a foot of snow on the roads, so it took us 8 hours (it usually takes 4.5) to get from Phoenix to Las Vegas, and we barely made it there.

We stayed the night in Henderson with my uncle Eddie and after the roads were a little clearer, made the rest of the trip to Utah. We are flying next year.

Thanksgiving

Jake and I had a great Thanksgiving, my mom, dad and sister Haley came out to AZ to visit us. I was so happy that they were here. We made an amazing thanksgiving dinner, with homemade pomegranate/apple cinnamon cider, spiced sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts (my favorite vegetable), Turkey (of course), corn pudding, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, berry cobbler and pumkin pie. It was fantastic. My mom, Jake and I woke up on Friday morning at 4:30 AM and went shopping. I was sooo fun, to have my mom there to shop with me. I get a little sick of shopping by myself. we got some great deals at Kohls, Target and Dillards (all lucky, calvin klein, and DKNY jeans for $29.99). It was fun. We got in the hot tub and pool a couple of times, played "are you smarter than a 5th grader" and went to Scottsdale. My mom had to leave Saturday for work on Sunday, but my dad stayed till Monday, we went to the Mesa temple and looked at the lights which were fantastic, and the weather was so nice and mildly cold. It was great, we wished mom was there. My sister Sara spent Thanksgiving with her fiance's family in CA, and my sister Jennifer spent Thanksgiving with her boyfriends family and working.

My sister Haley helped me set up my Christmas tree and hang all of the ornaments, it was fun to have her be just as excited as I get about decorating the Christmas tree. Jake only sticks with the ornament part for about 10 minutes and gets a bit bored. I'm so happy he tries to enjoy it though! He actually had a lot of homework to do.

I wanted to post five things that I'm grateful for:

Jake and Jake and Jake hhahahaha J/K

Jake, all of my family, the gospel and revelation, a working car with good gas mileage, and I definitely cannot forget great friends.

Love you all - Kim