Better Together: Christmas 2014

To sum it up we did a TON of driving and had good and bad experiences for our Christmas :) Pat and I went to Arizona for a couple days right before Christmas. Funny story, Thursday night before we left we watched World War Z and then we left to Arizona Friday and slept in our minivan that night. Well we were looking for a good place to sleep when we got there at 2 in the morning, and it turns out we found this place that had a motion light in the parking lot so it was nice because it would alert us, but wouldn't keep us up all night. It just so happens that it was the parking lot of a morgue ha ha ha. Now that's ironic.

We are all loaded up and ready to head out! Yes that is a mattress in the back of our van ha ha
And oops I cut Pat's head off. Sorry honey

I woke up in the middle of the night freezing!

We did get a hotel for the next 2 nights yay!And yes, I am a little obsessed with palm trees

I'm outside in a t-shirt in December. It was Perfect weather!

This was a delicious place we ate lunch at one day. Mmmm

We got to go to a NFL football game while we were there. Cardinals vs. Seahawks. Yay the Seahawks won!!

Monday morning we were heading back to Utah and we were driving down the highway and saw this awesome Christmas tree so we had to stop.

Merry Christmas from us and this 115 ft tall real Christmas Tree!

I'll put the star on top!

After leaving the awesome tree, we had about 10 hours left of driving when our good old van decided to smoke and die and blowup the transmission 10 miles outside of Flagstaff :(

Luckily we were 1 mile away from an exit and made it safely to the side of the road, and we even had cell phone service where we were. We were blessed in that way very much!

The last time seeing our Ford Windstar minivan.

So we got towed to Flagstaff, paid a bunch of money, paid more money for someone to diagnose our van even though Pat was pretty sure it was the transmission, waited 5 hours and then was told it was more money to fix our van than our van was worth. So we sold it to a junkyard for $300 and had to leave it there ( with our mattress in the back still ha ha) and we had taken out the 2 back seats before we left, so we still have those lol. Then we rented a rental car transferred all of the stuff we could into it, grabbed some food and headed to Utah much later than we had planned.
It was a long day. During the drive back we had to take an hour detour as well because they closed part of a road and didn't give any advance notice. But we made it home around 2 or 3 in the morning and were super glad to have just made it back and be able to finally get some sleep.
So we got 2 hours of sleep and went and saw Pat's family and had breakfast in Park City.
Then we drove to Rexburg later that day and got Paige and some of her stuff and brought it back. So basically we got 2 hours of sleep in like 40 hours ha ha. But it was kind of worth it. :)

Then we got to have Christmas with our families and look around and hopefully buy ourselves a new car for Christmas that we were not planning on ha ha.

Of course we did our Christmas Eve tradition as well, we get together with some good family friends and have a white elephant gift exchange and go around and talk about everything we were grateful for this year and bear our testimonies of Jesus Christ and the beautiful Christmas season and read the story of Christ's birth in Luke. Then we gather around a piano and sing Christmas hymns. It was joyful and triumphant.

Blessed, and spoiled, this looks like my childhood dream

Paige and Grandma :)

Yes that is a machete

Pat has been wanting a GoPro forever. I just couldn't bring myself to buy one though cuz they are ridiculously expensive, but I found this cheaper one! I hope it works great :)