Christmas to Now

We started off our Christmas vacation with a makeover project. Charlie's parents' bathroom needed a makeover. And of course, I was delighted to help. Here's a couple of "before" pictures. I had already started demo-ing when I thought to take some pictures, which is why there's a piece of wall missing.


We got all the walls ripped out that we needed. Luckily, the water damage wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, so we only had to rip out a small section of wall and floor.. The walls around the tub were taken out because we needed to put up a different type of board for the new tile to go on.

My cousin got married in Billings, so we headed up there. It was way too cold!
While we were in Billings, we decided to stop in and visit Charlie's cousin. Sam had a ton of fun playing with his cousin. There was a toy on the fridge that would play music. They just kept dancing all around the kitchen.


We also stopped in to visit Charlie's grandma, who was in the hospital after a car crash. This was just one of the many incidents of what I call the Rich Family Curse. A ton of people in the family got hurt over Christmas break, including Charlie's brother getting in an accident that totaled his vehicle, his aunt getting bucked off a horse and breaking a few bones, Charlie's mom having surgery on her knee, even I was hit with it, but I'll talk about that later. After a trip to Billings, we headed to my cousin's reception.



Now there's a story with this picture. Our big family gets together a few days before Christmas to have a Christmas party. One of the events for the evening is a gift exchange where everyone brings a gift and we pass them around in a circle while a story is told. My grandma ended up with a package of cookies. But this wasn't just any package of cookies. This package was modified by my brother. When my grandma opened the cookies, she found a bunch of pictures which showed David licking all the cookies. It was pretty hilarious. Of course, he didn't include the cookies that he licked.

Sam got these cars from Santa. They're Lightning McQueen and Chick. When you shake them, they rev up, say something, and then take off across the floor. He was completely intrigued with them until he opened up this present from grandma and grandpa Allred:
A Buzz Lightyear riding car. Sam has been obsessed with Toy Story ever since we saw it in theaters. After he opened that up, he just rode around and around while everyone else opened presents.
Charlie had promised Sam that he would take him ice fishing one day. Towards the end of break, he finally got a chance to go out. I wasn't able to go, but I heard that he had fun. Charlie's dad bought a sled to take him around the ice.

Sam helped his dad fishing, although he got scared when a fish was on the line and the pole would bounce up and down.

Here's another present that he got from grandma and grandpa Cordova. A massive train set. Charlie's dad had bought Sam part of a train set earlier, so we thought he would love to have more for the set. Now there's hills and 3 different remote control trains that he loves seeing crash into each other.

We got a new game for Christmas called Defenders of the Realm. It's a really fun game and we've had a ton of fun playing it.
On Sunday, Charlie was playing Hide and Seek with Sam.
Sam loved hiding from Charlie and having Charlie find him.

The funniest part was when Sam tried to hide under his bed. There's only a few inches of clearance so Sam could only fit his legs under it. When Charlie walked in, he just started laughing. It was pretty funny to see Sam trying to squeeze into such a small space. Sadly, I had already put my camera away by there.

Here's Sam after playing with bubbles. They get everywhere!
I just thought this picture was really cute :)

I wasn't able to finish the bathroom over break because I found out I was pregnant, then I had a miscarriage. I did fairly good emotionally (I got a blessing soon afterward which helped tremendously) but I was in a lot of physical pain with this miscarriage. I couldn't do much of anything because it hurt to get up and move around a lot. So I was basically just stuck in bed for a week until the pain went away. It's a pretty sad experience to go through. We've been trying for over a year to get pregnant, so it's pretty sad when things don't go the way you hoped they would. But we're all fine now and handling it fairly well. I guess it will happen when it's supposed to.
Hopefully I'll be able to finish the bathroom the next time we go home. I left them without even a toilet in the bathroom. Luckily they have another bathroom in the house, so it's not a complete disaster. I'll post pictures of the end whenever I get a chance to finish.