Sammy and Jakie had a great Christmas. Here they are showing off their new Christmas "Thomas the Tank Engine" jammies. They must have been good this year because they got a ton of stuff from Santa and our families. Some highlights were new tricycles, a wooden train set, new homemade comforters, new clothes, books, music, etc. We enjoyed Christmas Eve here in Waco with our little family and friends we have made here, it was a great time. Christmas day we spent in Waco as well, that is, until we realized that we might have hit a storm if we left for Utah when we planned. So, we left at six o'clock in the evening Christmas Day. We drove all night and missed some of the storm but still hit it a little before Gallup New Mexico. After more than 23 hours we surprised Alan's family by showing up unannouced. It was fun to surprise them. We then headed to Minda's parents house where we surprised them as well.
We had a great time visiting family, here are the boys bowling with Minda's family. We were able to see three of the four of Minda's brothers and their families.
We were able to visit all of Alan's family before his sister left for her first semester at BYU-I. Here are the boys with their cousin Gavin.
The boys with Grandpa Boppus.
Playing games!
Alan's Mom wanted to take the boys to the Monte. L Bean Science museum, they loved seeing the animals, as long as they didn't move.
Unfortunately we all got sick while we were in Utah. Alan mended pretty quickly, but the rest of us were sick most of our time there. Minda got three different sicknesses so she was down and out for a lot of the time. But, after being cooped up for days and days the boys were done being in the house. So, we took them to the Kangaroo Zoo, a place with a lot of bouncy toys. They loved it, especially the slides. They quickly learned to climb the ladders and slide down, they were quite agile.
We wanted to thank our families for taking such good care of us during our stays with them, and we were sorry we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to. We are finally mostly over the sickness and are happy to be home and sleeping in our own beds after sleeping very little on our car ride.
Here the boys are doing something they have come to love, pulling their shirts over their heads and running around the house. Richard and Robert you might recall doing this when you were kids too, remember Aladdin?
The boys have also learned to love oranges thanks to papa. And Dad has been teaching them how to eat them like a soccer player. Jacob hasn't quite caught on yet though.
