Our Utah week

We are home and are cleaning up the disaster that was made when we unloaded the car. But now it is time to recap on what we did in Utah. Here are the pictures.

First, these are the family pictures we had taken on Saturday, I love them.

The original Moreno Family
Here is our family, it took forever for Patrick to sit still with a decent look on his face so we had to give him a bag of fruit snacks to get him to stop crying so he has the bag in his hand.
And here are the baby girls, are they so adorable?? I cant wait to get these framed!
Roxanna holding the babies.
The boys had to go build a snow man out side
Jesus was the ladder man
Patrick actually went out for about a half hour and enjoyed himself, he reminded me of the kind on A Christmas story that says "I cant put my arms down"


This was the beginning of the snow wrestle between Jesus and his brother Cisco

This was the finished product of the snowman. Pretty gruesome huh?

Every year my dad makes the best biscuits and gravy I have ever eaten. But he only makes them on Christmas morning. Well I decided to try making them and they turned out yummy.
I want more
Patrick and Elena enjoyed the big chair
Elena and I were twinsies one day so we got a pic
Here are the adorable girls, I love this one of Lucia because she looks like she found Elenas hand and wants to have a taste

Patrick wanted a picture too
Gabe and Patrick made a Gingerbread house
Patrick had a hard time not eating the candies



This was the Christmas eve spread, yuuummmmmmmm
Christmas morning was madness. I have never had a christmas with that many people, it was awesome.

Lucia loved this little crawling winnie the pooh
Roxanna and I got matching jammies and we bought the girls matching jammies, soooo we took a picture

Present madness
Lucia got this fun tunnel thing so we stuck the girls in to play together


Sebastian wanted to play tooChristmas dinner preparations
Elena got a really cute outfit from Aunt Sara that she almost didnt get to wear because we left it at my Aunts house and Mom and Sara were leaving the next day, but luckily they called and Jesus went and got it.

Jesus played the tuba in Highschool and now his little brother Alexander is playing. Jesus decided to play us a few songs.



Then Patrick had to have a turnHere was the snow man after it had been snowing for a few days
And this was what it was like outside and the reason I didnt go anywhere for a week. It was pretty from the inside only.

My Little Thumb Sucker

Elena has started sucking her thumb occasionally and I think its really cute. I dont care if it starts a bad habit.

Happy "Holy" days

We have had a great time here in Springville spending all our time with the Moreno's. I havent left the house since last Saturday so tonight we are going to take a family picture and it will be nice to get out. I hear the roads are fine but I cant help the anxiety.

We will be heading home tomorrow after Jesus gets to eat one of his favorite dishes his mom makes. I cant deny him that. So we will be home Monday, when I will take the time to blog our fun times this Christmas week.

You would not believe the snow here, I can only imagine what folks in Midway are dealing with(Dawnelle and Eric, how do you stand it?) There have been so many car accidents and other accidents related to the snow. Im glad I live in California. At one point I think I had completely blocked all the snow out of my mind and when I looked out the window I expected to see grass and flowers and instead it was covered with snow!! Boooo!

Well, inside the house has really been fantastic and I will miss the atmosphere. Patrick needs this many aunts and uncles around all the time. Well until Monday, "The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. " ~Burton Hillis

Our little adventure

Well we had originally planned on leaving on Friday but we saw that it might be snowing on Friday so we left on Thursday after the big desert storm. We of course had to wait until some of the roads opened. We ran our errands while we waited and bought some chains in case the roads got bad and we got a call from Jocelyn telling us that walker pass was open if we had chains so right before we headed for walker pass we heard that the 58 had opened so we left. It was nice and sunny but I, of course, was still nervous.

We got through Tehachapi fine and then hit traffic, where we waited until 5:30 to finally get through Kramer junction. It was really icy at the gas stations but the roads were pretty dry. We got a call from Jesus's sister that they were stuck in Primm with a dead battery. So we stopped in Barstow to buy a battery and have dinner and feed the baby. We got on our way and the roads were pretty dry until we started going down the hill towards Primm and there was a little ice but we didnt have any problems. So we found his sisters and put the battery in their car. By that point it was 9:30 and we were all pretty sick of being in the car and so we decided to stay the night in Primm. We got a room and went to bed.

We got up in the morning got breakfast and headed on our way. We made a couple stops to get gas and feed the baby and then we got to St. George by noon. We had lunch and stopped at my uncles house for a rest. We drove through mostly sunny skies until we were about 2 hours from Springville. The snow started falling and we kept it slow and stayed behind a big truck. We finally hit Nephi at about 7 and we only had an hour left, but we could barely see the truck in front of us and we ran out of windshield fluid so we stopped. We decided we should put the chains on just to be safe. We waited there awhile and then got on our way. Elena cried the rest of the way and Patrick just put his blanket over his head.

We were about a half a mile from our exit when the chains broke and we had to pull over and take them off. We got here at about 8pm and are safe and warm in the Moreno house. We dont have any plans to go anywhere except maybe the Orton (my Moms family) Christmas party. After that, Im not going anywhere till we go home. Patrick did go out this morning for maybe 5 minutes then started crying because he was cold. Oh well.

Hear ye hear ye, snow experts

Okay, so Friday we are leaving for Utah to spend Christmas with the Morenos. We are really excited to be there for Christmas and for them to see Elena in person for the first time. The only thing Im not excited about is the drive. For those of you that do not know, I am terrified of driving in any weather than nice, sunny, dry weather. I am so scared of driving in the snow that I may just cry the whole way. We are going to watch the weather which is supposed to be partly sunny by the end of the weekend and Jesús has agreed that we will not drive when it is actually snowing. But I am still so very scared that something is going to happen. If it isnt snowing, is it safe? Are the things that I should know that will make me feel better? I feel bad that because of this fear, I have kept Jesús from spending the holidays with his family (money also was a big part of that, we are poor) but even the thought of having to drive through all of those mountain passes where we could get into an accident scares the daylights out of me. So help me, make me feel better about this so I wont be a wreck for this long drive!!! If it helps you to know just how scared I am, I'm also terrified of driving in the rain. I cried almost the whole way to Disneyland when it was raining.

If we were sticks

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My Adorable Children

I got a video of Elena laughing the other night, here it is

And this is what she was laughing at

Yes those are my adorable kids.