Christmas 2010 fun!

We spent Christmas with this lovely lady.....Jeff's mom, Lori. We had a wonderful week in Ogden, Utah visiting with family and had a relaxing Christmas break. We flew in on Christmas Eve and Lori took us to temple square in Salt Lake. We enjoyed walking around and treated Lori to a yummy lunch at the Garden restaurant in the Joseph Smith building. Wow, that was a great way to start our trip! We enjoyed walking around the new Desert Bookstore downtown....so many things to see!

Here's the loot Christmas morning! We had a whole suitcase full of presents we brought...there is just something so exciting about having a whole bag full of presents! Now I know how Santa feels!
Some gifts we got were: clothes, books, murder-mystery game, church DVD's, music stand, cd's, and more! We were spoiled by family and each other.
Favorite Gift for Jeff: I-Phone 4!
Favorite Gift for Laura: Hard-cover book of my missionary emails! Thanks Mom!

Here's Grandpa Whitehead with his Christmas gifts. He rang the jingle bells while we sang Christmas carols around the piano. :)

We spent Christmas morning and afternoon on the web cam. It was fun to see family members open their presents "live"! I am continually amazed by the web cam technology and think it is fabulous!

We spent lots of time with family members, which was fun! Christmas eve we went to the Morris' household which was filled with fun people! Here are the grand kids below which spent the night entertaining us. :)

We loved seeing their beautiful new home. It was a wonderful evening.

Christmas day we went to Grandma Tolsma's home for a yummy meal and more presents. Here is a picture of some of the family that was there...we didn't get one of everyone! Grandma Tolsma had her home in tip-top shape for Christmas!

We had some Christmas visitors....Grandpa enjoyed it when Murray & Gina & kids came over. We got to meet Xia, who is the newest grand-child adopted from China!

Monday morning I went to a ladies breakfast at my Aunt Dianna's. It was fun to see my cousins and aunts that live in Salt Lake.

What a good-looking group of Bates' girls!

Jeff and I spent Wednesday afternoon with my grandparents. It was so fun to see them!
We were hoping to see some of our folk dance friends too, but a blizzard blew into town just as we were traveling to see them. Needless to say, we didn't make it and had to turn back. Good thing Jeff has some good snow-driving skills, we made it back fine! I was pretty sad we didn't get to catch up with them...maybe next time!

Jeff convinced his mom to buy a new computer and bring her to the new age of technology. :) We gave her a nice web cam for Christmas and spent a lot of time teaching her how to use it and getting her computer set up.

Speaking of technology....the picture above was the first picture Jeff took on his new I-Phone. He has been a giddy guy with this new toy....it is amazing how cool it is!

Tuesday we went to the Ogden temple with Jeff's mom and Grandma Tolsma. It was fun to see the temple which is so similar to the Provo temple that Jeff and I went to all the time. They will be closing it soon for re-modeling...it will be neat to see the finished product.

We had a yummy lunch and enjoyed the new movie "Tangled." We'd recommend it to anyone, it was cute!

We spent a lot of time this trip just sitting around and talking. It was so relaxing. We admired Jeff's mom as she took care of her aging father. She is a wonderful lady and we have a new-found appreciation for her daily duties.

It was a wonderful trip, and we were glad we could make it to Utah to be with Jeff's Mom and Grandpa. We love going to Utah!

We returned home the afternoon of New Years Eve. We had the traditional fondue for dinner and then dressed up for the stake youth New Years Eve dance that we chaperoned. It was a fun dance and brought back a lot of memories. Jeff and I both LOVED dances growing up, and it was fun to re-live those feelings as we watched the cute teens. And yes, we danced it up in the corner as the nerd married couple.

Happy New Year!