What a wonderful Christmas we had this year! Caleb and I were able to leave the night I got off work to go to Utah for 6 days. About a week before we were supposed to leave we got some bad news...Caleb had an ear infection, a staph infection, and a mild case of the chicken pox! I took him in because he was a little lethargic and had a fever and was shocked to hear he was such a mess. Luckily we got him started on his medicine and by the time we left for Utah he was pretty well cleared up. Caleb continues to do better with flying each time we travel. This time was a little different because Travis wasn't able to take us to the airport, so I was concerned about getting all our luggage checked in, getting our car in long term parking, and getting Caleb to the terminal by myself. Thankfully our sister-in-law allows us to use one of her car seats in Utah so at least I didn't have to worry about lugging that around. After all my stressing, things went off without a hitch, and I think we timed our trip perfectly to miss the majority of the holiday travelers.
We always have so much fun in Utah. Caleb absolutely adores his cousins and this year was so funny going up to different cousins and asking them to go play downstairs with him. There is quite an age difference between he and his cousins Savannah and Jackson, but they were wonderful with him, and played cars with him and had a lot of patience with him. He also loved playing with his cousins on the DeJong side, but especially loves to play with Brynlee. We were able to eat at a lot of my favorite restaurants like Cafe Rio and Magleby's Fresh for breakfast. We also saw snow which was very exciting for Caleb. We went to the BYU bookstore, saw our Grandpa Sheen, and Caleb went to see the lights at temple square which he still talks about. Caleb also got a two story garage and a toy with animals that helps him to learn the alphabet from his grandparents. He got a tow truck. He also got a Mac Truck (from Cars) which he had to carry with him everywhere after he opened it.
We were happy to get home to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with Travis. It was very quiet for us...the first time we've had Christmas at home. It was different, but it was nice for us. On Christmas Eve, we continued the Sheen tradition by having a Family Talent Show. My talent was baking sugar cookies, Travis read the Christmas story, and Caleb sang several songs. We aso put cookies out for Santa. This was the first year we've been able to do any of those things with Caleb so it was really fun for us. I also made a gingerbread house earlier in the month which Travis and I had decorated. It was supposed to make it to New Years but we ended up picking the candy off piece by piece until New Years Eve when all that was left was the house, some frosting, and some rock hard Mike and Ike's.
For Christmas Caleb got a bowling set, a Tball set, a Tow Truck, books, and other cars. We spent all day playing with his different toys. I was most surprised with how much he enjoyed his bowling set. Trav and I tried our hand at making Christmas dinner. We cooked our first turkey which turned out kind of weird. All of the meat looked cooked and there wasn't any pink but as Travis trimmed the meat off the inside was this liquidy meat...I don't know how to explain it. I'm not sure what happened there, but we ended up nuking some of the outside meat and throwing out the rest because it was just a little too dodgy for us. I also made rolls, mashed potatoes, jello salad, and we had a lemon meringue pie. I also made sure we had something else to eat for that evening because another Sheen tradition is having a big lunch and then not having anything to eat for dinner and driving around Christmas night trying to find any place that is open, which usually ended up being Sonic or a gas station to get dinner from.
We spent the rest of the break just hanging out together and then on New Years Day went hiking at a place here called Enchanted Rock. I love the outdoors but I am not a big hiker. We had kind of felt like that Caleb had been getting into quite a bit of mischief over the break and we wanted to take him somewhere that he could just run around and we could let him go and not have to constantly be telling him "no." The hike was short but it was almost vertical at places and so we stopped often to catch our breaths. The view was great but it was super cold on the top of the rock so we just spent a little time up there and then came back down. We decided to swing by Fredricksburg since we were only about 20 miles away and had never been there and get something to eat for dinner. They have a main street that looks a lot like Park City Main Street so I just had Travis park the car and we started to walk down the street looking for something. We couldn't find a single restaurant that looked like something we wanted to eat and we were all starting to reach our limit, so I told Travis Caleb and I would sit on a bench and that he should quickly look at a few other restaurants to see if one of them would work. He left and then an LDS senior missionary couple walked by. I called out to them and begged them to tell us where a pizza or mexican restaurant was so that we could eat. We chatted with them for a bit and they suggested a pizza place that was pretty famous in the town. The only problem was that it was on the complete opposite side of our car so we had to walk all the way back to it. All the way back, Travis was like "Let's just get there" and I was like "Are you mad at me?" because I was the one who suggested we got to Fredricksburg in the first place. When we got to the restaurant it was nice and warm inside, the servers were super quick with the food, and we all enjoyed our food so that was a relief. After that we loaded up for the 2 hour drive back to our house. It was something different and was fun for us, because we really haven't had much chance to see a lot of the outdoor things in the area.
Overall we had a great holiday season, tried some new things on our own, and loved having time to spend with family. Caleb still says to me from time to time that he "misses his fambily" and I tell him were right here, and he says "I miss my cousins." We are blessed to have such a wonderful extended family.
