Karl and Angela Rees

We enjoyed the week in Utah with family.   Most days were spent hanging around the warm house with family, keeping sheltered from the snow and cold all around us.  Karl's never seen so much snow at Christmas!  We were glad to see Thomas adjust so quickly to Angela’s family.  He would play a lot with them, which gave us a little break.  He even learned to say Grandpa and Grandma (His vocabulary has increased quite a bit).  He did a lot of exploring.  One bad habit that he developed over the week was waking up more and more in the middle of each night.  Perhaps he was cold, or it was just a new place, or we were just more atuned to him waking up because we were in the same room.  But we are hoping that this trend will die when we get home.  (We aren’t expecting newborn sleeping habits until mid next year).

Monday night, Angela and Thomas went to dinner with a few of Angela’s friends.  She enjoyed seeing them and Thomas was very well behaved.

Tuesday, Karl did some last minute shopping with Thomas while Angela stayed at home and made a felt face for Thomas to play with during church.  That evening we watched Wall-E.

Wednesday we went to see "Australia" while Thomas stayed with his Grandparents.  He didn’t complain one bit.  He did try to look for us a couple of times, but that was it.  We really enjoyed the movie.  Angela’s sister’s family arrived while we were gone, so we enjoyed some time with them when we returned from the movie.  That evening we watched "Nim’s Island."

Christmas morning we enjoyed breakfast before unwrapping presents--not after, which is a little unusual, but Thomas and Angela and the baby inside of Angela were starving.  Thomas seemed to enjoy his new presents.  We enjoyed all of our presents.  We have such a thoughtful family.   Karl and Thomas played in the snow a little bit, but Thomas wasn't too happy about the cold.  Karl even built him two snowmen and a snow dog, but he wasn't interested.  Around noon Jenny’s family showed up and we joined in games until dinner was ready.  Missionaries joined us for dinner.  After dinner we enjoyed some more games.

Friday afternoon, Karl and Angela left Thomas for their first night away from Thomas since he was born.  We stayed at Little America and had a night out on the town.  We went to dinner at The Melting Pot.  This a  fondue restaurant that we wished we could have eaten more at.  We wanted to try dessert, but we just too full.   We then went to the "Nutcracker" ballet.  Even though the weather was blistering cold and we were walking on ice most of the way, we survived walking to all of these downtown Salt Lake locations, since they were all close to the hotel.  

Saturday, after stuffing ourselves at the buffet breakfast and hitting the pool, we went back to the Duncans.  We did not stay very long, as we wanted to head off to see Jenny and Tavis and their finished basement.  They finished it quite awhile ago, but we had not seen it yet.  After being jealous of their lovely large home (especially by California standards) we played some Guitar Hero and Ticket to Ride.  Karl was nice enough to watch Thomas while Angela enjoyed time with her family.  Karl really enjoyed watching Thomas and his cousin Ciera play together.