Goodbye to the Grands

We woke up this morning to an empty house - well, a house with only two boys, a mom, a dad, a dog, and one fish. After a whirlwind two and a half weeks with the grandparents painting Sestra's room, eating way too much turkey and potatoes, decorating the house for Christmas, celebrating Steve's birthday, and attending a shower and the Christmas Dessert we are facing a Saturday with no guests and nothing on the calendar. Don't worry, though, we won't be bored - we have 1001 more pre-travel things to check off of our to do list!

Despite the look on Ben's face in the above picture (he was clearly displeased with us for making him pose when he could be watching Kung Fu Panda), we had a great time visiting with Gramma, Poppop, and Grammy. It was especially fun for them to be a part of our preparations for Sestra, and we sure appreciated the extra hands with the carpet cleaning, painting, and decorating - thank you grandparents!

Before Grammy left yesterday, we had a conveniently schedule field trip with both Sam and Ben's classes to the Festival of Trees, so we spent the morning together before heading up to the airport. The Festival of Trees is a fund raiser for Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake and it was really cool! They had tons of decorated trees, wreaths, and (the kids' favorite) gingerbread houses that are all donated and then purchased by members of the community. It was a lot of fun, and all for a really fantastic cause.

And when Ben figured out that you got a candy cane when you visited Santa, he decided that he'd give Santa's lap a whirl. For the first time ever, our Ben stood in line and made his request of Santa - this year he would like "lots and lots of gum!" A boy after my own heart.