Christmas 2010

It's been a while, so we'll see how much I can accurately remember here. This year we took Christmas to Idaho to visit the Baer side of the family. We left during the rain (it had been raining for a week straight here in California) and our wipers never stopped during the 14 hour drive. I was worried that we wouldn't have room for all our stuff. To put my mind at ease Ryan went through quite an ordeal to get one of those car-top storage containers. Well it turns out we didn't even need it. (He returned it later with no problems.)

It's always good to see my family and enjoy the slower paced feel of Idaho. We can always count on lots of food (I'm never hungry during our stays there), unique Thai gifts from Shannon, being introduced to fun games by Jeremy's family, music and conversation from the Bachelors, some kind of unplanned complication or surprise from Heather (car dying, pregnancy announcement), and running into lots of people who know Dad around town. Our kids were sick off and on so we didn't venture out too much and we didn't get to sledding. There wasn't even much snow until the day we left. We got to see Amy (Ryan's sister) and her husband even took us on a tour of the U.S. Marshals facilities in Pocatello.

When it was time to go we packed everything up, saran-wrapped my Christmas present (a cute beach cruiser bike from Ryan), put it on the bike rack, and headed out into the blizzard. On the drive home we encountered snow, rain, wind, and sand. The sand beat up our car a bit, and we now have a cracked windshield. But the bike survived!

We in St. George and even met up with a friend of mine from my preschool days who I hadn't seen for probably 25 years. We had just found each other on facebook. It was a lot of fun to see Chanda and meet her family. Ryan approved too, and said it was too bad we lived so far away since they seem like they'd be fun to hang out with. I'm kicking myself for not getting a picture, but it was definitely a highlight of the trip.