New Year's 2016-17

 In order to get home in time for Josh to get to work, we had to leave right after Nathan's wedding the next morning.  We knew that we weren't going to get to do anything much for New Years.  We ended up heading to Texas Roadhouse for a special dinner in some small town in the middle of Nebraska and then we went to send off Sky Lanterns that we had brought with us.  

 I even remembered to get matches from my parents house before we left.  We headed to a frozen field and tried to light a lantern.  We went through the entire baggie of matches I had brought until we were down to two.  Josh struck them together and we finally got a flame.

 It grew a little bit as we all stood around it trying to shield it from the wind.

 It was pretty fun to watch it glow as the wick tried to burn into a strong enough flame to take the lantern up.

 As it started to rise, the wind began to pick up again.

There was a moment we thought it was going to go up just like how we had all pictured it happening (accompanied by the wishes that we all forgot to make).  The wind grabbed it and it flew not up but away across the parking lot!  Josh chased it down to catch it before it set something on fire, but luckily it got some height and we watched it going until burn out.  

We only got to do one, and we didn't wish anything for the new year on it, but we all laughed like crazy and then headed to our hotel room that was actually right by the field.  We watched the ball drop in New York on the TV, wished each other goodnight and went to sleep.  It wasn't really and eventful New Year's, but we won't forget it!

Nathan's Wedding

 We went to Utah for Uncle Nathan's wedding.  It was so fun to be with all of the cousins and Palmer even caught the garter, which was hilarious.  He gave it back to Nathan :)

 We love the cousin!

Our big huge fun family!

Salt Lake Trip 2016

 When we lived in Utah, we had a Christmas tradition of going to the play Savior of the World every December.  We were so excited to get to go again when we we visited this year.  It was as good as we remembered! 

 Another of our traditions was to stay in the Marriott and go visit all of the lights at Temple Square and City Creek.  We also love the pool at the Marriott and it was super fun to have Uncle Mark come after he took our family pictures!

 He is the funnest uncle!

 Swim races.

My favorite picture!

Such good memories and we made even more!

 We usually go to Leatherby's after Savior of the World, but it was closed that night, so we went the next day.  We couldn't miss it!  It was as good as I remember!

Skiing at Snow Basin

 Once upon a time we would ski as a family every weekend.  Every year we would get season passes and love every minute of the snow.  I think we were some of the only people that were happy when the snow stayed a long time.  The boys have missed snow so much, and they were so excited when we told them we were going skiing at Snow Basin over Christmas break.

 McKay didn't remember much of skiing, so Josh had to reteach him.  This was quite difficult since Josh was in major pain from hurting his toe during scatterball on Christmas Eve.  He's a toughy.

 The older boys didn't take much time to remember how to ski and were zipping down the mountain, even doing some black diamond runs.

 These two struggled a little bit.  

 But in the end, McKay ended up doing great.

 It was so beautiful up there.  I really miss snowy mountains (but am not too sad to not have snow and cold temperatures in Georgia).

 We ate at a restaurant at the top of the mountain.  Definitely a highlight.

I ended up skiing with these crazies the whole time!