Christmas Cheer

The Bakersfield fog.

This is our neighbors house from our front door. The fogs here get SO bad. I get scared driving in them and Jeremy and I agree they kindof cause a sense of claustrophobia. Now we are realizing why some of the highway things are set up like they are. For example, almost all the roads are divided by a median, which helps because you can hardly see lines on the road in a heavy fog, and almost all the lights have a green arrow, which I thought was stupid until one of the fogs and I thought "I'm sure glad I don't have to yield to oncoming traffic based on what I can see coming because I can't see anything coming!" On some of the back roads you can even get lost just driving straight because you don't know what you've passed. The other day Jeremy said "did we go through a light already?" Sad thing was neither of us had seen anything. They even have fog delays for the schools where they start two hours later than usual. In one week there were three which all the locals said was pretty unusual.


Here's what all that moisture in the air and a few dirt storms can do to a door mat. (That would be grass growing)
The ward Christmas party


Ellia did pretty good with Santa - after he bribed her with a candy cane, which of course neither Jeremy nor I could get away from her so she ended up a sticky mess.

Patrick and Jeremy with their little girls!

Our house decorations, requested by mom and Emily! Thanks by the way, it was a good excuse for me to clean things up and take the pictures so I can remember how i did it for next year!

Our first family Christmas party the day after we arrived in Utah. Here's a story. The day before the party Jeremy went fishing with his brothers who then came to my house to say hello. A commercial for the Snuggie (blanket with sleeves) came on and one of Jeremy's brothers (who shall remain nameless, chm Travis) started making fun of it. Then he went on to say, "Have you seen the one for the Amish fireplaces, that one is hilarious." and my mom chimed in, "I just bought one of those for my mom!" So here it is...

(we tried to get as much use as possible out of Ellia's Christmas dress!)

Grandpa and Ellia playing with the first Christmas toy of many.

The traditional Nativity. Although the cousins were somewhat more cooperative this year, the uncooperative ones were worse than usual. The Angel (Ellia) kept popping in and out of the scene because she was obsessed with the stroller - which by the way was NOT carrying baby Jesus.

We had to tuck the Angel dress in Ellia's pants because she kept tripping over it, and there's Sara ducking behind the "Shepherd" just so we could get ONE picture of all of them...turned out great didn't it!

At least a little better than last year right? Can you pick out the differences?!

Nativity

After Nativity Chaos

Ellia's shopping cart and doll were a big hit Christmas morning! Except she got really frustrated trying to maneuver it around all the gift wrapping at Grandma Laura's!

Giving shots with her Dr. kit.Pooped. It snowed a few feet on Christmas day at my house in Midway so we bundled up and tested Ellia in it.

She was really too tired at that point to care much.

A few more presents at Grandma's Carol's.

The snowfall was so gorgeous and had perfect Christmas spirit timing...we had to take a little walk in it. (This is my mom's house, I told you California's I grew up with a lot of snow! This isn't even the worst year of it)

Some mailboxes

Some posts where the snow had been gathering

Our backyard the next morning. That's a shed to the far right, and a patio set on the bottom.

Where were YOU on Thanksgiving day?

Yosemite National Park...top of Upper Falls


We've been wanting to go to Yosemite since we are somewhat close, and we decided to combine Thanksgiving and our anniversary together into an adventurous trip! Jeremy and Ellia are showing how big they are next to the huge sequoia's (Biggest tree around Mallary and Greg, while the Redwoods are the biggest tree in height...so there's one argument you can end! JK)

We didn't realize until Jeremy left the picture that Ellia wasn't comparing her height, she just couldn't put her arms down in her big winter coat!
As typical of one of our vacations there was one pretty rainy day, the fog can really make things beautiful though!

Ouray, C0 2006

Zion National Park, 2oo4

Less beautiful was the fact that nearly everything (as far as food goes) was closed for the season.

On Thanksgiving day we decided to take a hike. (notice half dome in the distance)

Not long into it, Ellia was already done.

The sky was pretty clear and the further we went the better the views got.

A mile in we reached the point we thought we were going to turn around, but Ellia was being so good we decided to see if we could get a little closer view of the falls.

On the way we walked against a super steep cliff just as more fog was rolling in (I almost fell over backward trying to look up and take this picture...no, literally). It reminded me of the white cliffs of Dover from Princess Bride, and just as we passed it we realized we were out of site of the water fall, Ellia was awake, and we were still hiking. Although pretty exhausted, not at all acclimated, rationing one bottle of water and Ellia's cheerios, and figuring we would end up turning back any time, especially once Ellia started screaming . . .

We made it to the top! A 3.5 mile hike that had an elevation change of 2700 feet!! (7 miles round trip). I don't want to sound wussy but I it was the hardest hike I can remember doing, and Jeremy had Ellia on his back!

Of course, just as we summitted the fog really made a presence and we only had a few quick moments when the fog subsided enough to see the view from way up here (as a comparison I've included another picture of the falls from a distance)

To get a better view (which ironically involved hiking downward) we had to take this super safe path (I don't think John Muir would appreciate the handrail but we sure did!)

No worries mom and Laura, we took turns going down while the other held Ellia on safer ground. If you look closely in this picture you can see the water taking the spill over the cliff.

One last reminder of our STEEP climb. The whole thing took us around 6 hours I think.

After the hike we went for Thanksgiving dinner at Yosemite Lodge (not closed!) and I can honestly say I have never deserved more or worked harder for a Thanksgiving meal, so generally it would taste better than any thanksgiving dinner I've ever had!

The next best thing about exerting yourself is feeling worthy of sitting on your butt the rest of the night...good thing we had Ellia to show us how!


Here is our little cabin.

On our last day in Yosemite we drove to Hetch Hetchy dam. It was similar to Hoover dam in looks which I found very surprising.

If you look closely you can see the dam

We ate at Evergreen Lodge for lunch that day and though neither of us felt very hungry we wolfed down some amazing food! I would recommend the place to anyone, it was SO good!

Ellia even continued eating her first pickle despite some telling puckers!

Finally, as we were driving out of Yosemite we saw a sign for a craft fair so we drove off the road a ways to a one room elementary where we bought some delicious pumpkin pie and other one of a kind souvenirs.

In other news, BYU lost to Utah. I know, know, its old news. Anyway, we watched the game with some friends, Mike was the only Utah fan, he tried hard not to be too excited in front of us at the end.


Ellia, when Utah won.