Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays from the great state of Idaho. As you can see from the number of road closures below, we are having a very, very white Christmas this year. So white, in fact, that I am pretty sure I am going to be in very intense therapy for several years in an attempt to recover from our terrifying white-out drive from Burley to IF last weekend. But near-death experiences aside, this Christmas has been wonderful so far.

Our family is all spread out this December 25th.

Warren, Becky, and the girls are in Burley...

... Mikey is in Brazil ...

... Spencer and Brianna are in Buffalo ...

... and Jenny, John, and the Utah Niblets are in , ummmm, By Provo (leave it to that Utah family to mess up my whole "B" thing I had going. Seriously, would it have been so hard for them to spend the holiday season in Botswana or Bangladesh to preserve my run of alliteration?).

We spent part of Christmas Eve with Warren's girls before they left to race the blizzard to Burley, so we got to watch Kenna and Kylie open some of their presents. My sister Jenny, the professional mommy, got the girls beautiful tutus. Kenna tried hers on for a few minutes...

...but Kylie wore hers for the rest of the evening. She used her cute little tutu to distract the rest of us while she pilfered low-lying goodies.

But while Kenna's Aunt Jenny was investing in sparkles and tulle, Aunt Mindy was busy finding the perfect Christmas gift for an extreme-rodeo-loving-two-year-old: A toy bull.

Kenna appeared to love it, which thrilled me. Her parents, however, were less thrilled considering the bull is, uh, anatomically correct with all of its bull parts included. Warren is hoping to perform a little field surgery on the bull before Kenna starts asking questions. Too bad Dr. Seuss didn't write a book that would make that conversation a little easier. Of course, it would probably be difficult to find a word that rhymes with...never mind. Moving on...

We get our Christmas phone call to Brazil later this afternoon and, if the weather gets less homicidal, we will be going to see Jenny's kids next week, making Spencer and Brianna our only family members with whom we won't connect this Christmas (Spencer has practice [I guess the NFL doesn't believe in Christmas] and Brianna is spending the day saving lives at her hospital).

But thanks to one of the gifts my dad received today, we still get to catch a glimpse of Spence.

My mom found this great BYU football book/memorabilia collection that covers the entire history of the mighty cougars.
And what would the history of BYU football be without at least a mention of Super Manager Spencer? You can see his "Y" hat and his blurry nose next to the ref's shoulder. He wasn't listed in the caption, but I'm sure that was just an oversight.

So with Christmas day just under half-way completed, the presents have been opened, the scones have been eaten, new clothes tried on, snow shoveled, grand kids/nephews/nieces telephoned, and "thank you" note lists started. All in all, it has been an extremely successful day.

But the highlight will be talking to missionary Mikey this afternoon. Those missionary phone calls are great reminders of the reason for the season. Merry Christmas!