Post-Christmas Activities

The morning after Christmas, Nate and I went snowshoeing with Ben, Allan, Katie, and Zipper while Austin stayed with my parents. It was a very cold morning, and the snow was very powdery. We just went a little ways along the Bonneville Shoreline trail.

It was super fun to spend time together with everyone. Zipper was delighted with the snow, and had a fantastic time chasing snowballs. That is one of her favorite winter activities, after all. We laughed to watch her trying to jump and otherwise make her way through the snow that was nearly as high as she is tall.

Nate was having such a terrific time, he decided to do a cartwheel in the snow.

The snow blanketed landscape truly was beautiful.

And I just love spending time with this group!

We were mesmerized by the tiny individual snowflakes we could see when looking closely at the snow.

The snow clumped like big lumpy cotton balls on the bare winter foliage also created interesting texture in the landscape.

Dry Canyon

Saturday afternoon we were able to see the exhibit "American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell" at the BYU Museum of Art. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and apparently went through it much much slower than the rest of my family. When I finally finished viewing everything, I found that all my family had left except for Nate and Austin, who were patiently waiting for me outside the exhibit. I highly recommend seeing this exhibit while you can to anyone who is close enough to go.

We also dropped by Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Norm's place after the museum. It had been awhile since we last saw them.

Sunday afternoon we got together again with Nate's old roommates and their families. It was a fun gathering!

We went back to our house Sunday night, but Nate had the week following Christmas off work too. Therefore, we tried to do some fun things as a family during that time. We played games, went bowling, and Nate and I went on a date to see the new Star Wars movie. Nate's sister Melissa and her family came over to our house on New Years Eve, so we had a nice turkey lunch together and played more games with them.

That evening we relaxed, threw Snaps on our driveway with Austin, and worked more on the Neuschwantstein Castle Puzzle we started roughly a year ago. We thought for sure this would be a great puzzle when we got it, especially since the box clearly stated it was a "High Quality Puzzle!" However, building it turned out to be very difficult. The problem was that a large number of the pieces were similarly shaped and seemed to fit together perfectly even when they weren't supposed to go together. The castle portion was easy enough to figure out despite this complication, but the sky and the foliage were a bit of a nightmare to assemble. We kept getting discouraged and letting the puzzle just sit unattended for long periods between our sporadic attempts at it. Incredibly enough, we actually finished it this last weekend though! And miraculously, we still had all the pieces for it despite many times small young hands have been at it when friends have come over to play.