HAPPY CHRISTMAS, RON

Only a week or so late but hey! Here's a little bit of our Christmas in Utah.

For Christmas Utah gave us snow. And snow and snow and snow! It was lovely. The mountains were bare when we landed but by the time we woke up Christmas morning, everything had been covered in a freshly dusted topping of white. It was pretty magical. The boys went sledding and the girls did jigsaw puzzles. My niece Morgan filled us in on her secret for 45-minute showers: she brings her iPhone into the shower with her in a ziplock bag, tapes it to the wall, and then watches an episode of Parks and Rec while she washes her hair. Right? I'm still basking in the genius of this idea.

This is Brandon. Brandon is my husband. It's funny how after 11 years of marriage one can still discover new things about one's husband and his family. Such as: how deep an aversion to planning in advance some people can actually have. You know by-the-seat-of-their-pants types, right? Change-your-mind-but-forget-to-mention-it-to-anyone types? I'm finally getting into the swing of it, learning not to ask, "So what's the plan today?" and just paying attention to the subtle cues and rolling with it. One day, someday, I swear I'll be so chill. I'll be, like, the chillest person on the planet. All thanks to Brandon, the chill despot. I finally got past the thing where my inner planner goes on overdrive to compensate for the lack of planning, and now I'm like, sooo almost there.

Anyway, inflatable reindeer ring toss games.

My niece Jaycey got a Polaroid for Christmas that she instantly put to good use, terrorizing all of us when we least expected it. :) I rounded them up while she was out of the room and really looked at all of them, all of the faces in the family, the aunts and uncles and grandparents cousins, and I realized, you know what, these are an AMAZING keepsake! Ultra candid and horribly embarrassing and just so human, you know? I think I'm gong to need to remember this for next year on Christmas morning. I snapped a quick photo of our three so I could always remember. Brandon looks especially good here I think. :)

Huck was in little boy heaven on earth with his cousins. He idolizes them and they were so, so, so sweet with him. They wore him out clean good, and I got all the exhausted big baby snuggles a girl could want at night. That's some heavy duty mom heaven on earth right there. We are in cousin withdrawal now. Brooklyn is in stark shortage of cousins, somebody needs to fix that for us.

When in Utah there are a certain number of things one must do in order to fully experience the Utah in all the Utah glory. 

FIRST: Eat at Cafe Rio, at least thrice. The pork salad. 

THE PORK MOTHER EFFING SALAD.

SECONDLY: Fondle at least one of Courty's boobs. I don't know, you guys. This was such an awkward moment for my chest. My girls finally realized in that moment the full extent of their breastly inadequacy, and they still haven't recovered. I'd told them! I mean, I knew they sucked! (HAR HAR) I don't know how they called themselves boobs all this time, when THAT was parading around needing actual support and things. But, anyway. 

I dreamed about nursing that night. It was very Freudian.

THIRDEST: Try whatever currently trendy food situation is happening in Provo. It was a Dirty Diet Dr Pepper double header! In a Swig vs Sodalicious showdown, I vote the Sodalicious sugar cookie the superior sugar cookie. Though both tasted mostly like sawdust. #wompwomp. Swig's DDDP was more carbonated than Sodalicious's, so take from that what you will, and soda accordingly.

LAST OF ALL: Boardgames, the national past time of the Holbrook clan. There were lots of board games going around. Most of the Holbrook classic board games are above Huck's skill level, though for his dad's sake he managed to get really into Candy Land for a minute. His dad may live to regret it. I think these photos of an edamame-fueled Chutes + Ladders game rather depict the thrill of victory and agony of defeat quite nicely, actually.

Chutes & Ladders is a pretty cruel game, yo. 

(Penguin cheerleaders.)

And then we had MORE SNOW. 

And it didn't strand us this time. 

My father-in-law's assortment of funny Russian hats for the win. :)

HOORAY FOR ALEX!

ohhh, alex!

my baby sister got married over the weekend, is she not the most beautiful bride ever!? oh that dress! her hair! i still get all emotional whenever i think about it. it was just the most beautiful weekend and the most beautiful wedding and everything went off without a hitch and i was so proud of her. it was just a really gorgeous day. we flew out to utah on thursday night and then flew back to new york on sunday night, so it was a crazy whirlwind of a trip. brandon was with huck at huck's grandma's house for a lot of it, since huck was recovering from a cold, and i did my sisterly best to document the weekend and make stupid jokes and luckily provide back-up sister bridesmaid dresses when the skirts we'd planned to wear turned out to be too big for both of us. thank you, zara! MVP of the weekend!

i have a ton of photos because obviously.

the night before the wedding the three of us had a slumber party/bachelorette party. we stayed up as long as our eyelids would let us and talked about all of the silly things you talk about the night before a wedding. it was the first time i'd seen amanda in over a year and it was so good to catch up with her! we had a million things to cover. at one point that night alex went out to solve a lipstick crisis and it was just the two of us and one of alex's bridesmaids in the hotel room for a bit (alex had the best bridesmaids, it was so fun to meet all of her friends and her new sisters-in-law), and there we were talking really fast like sisters do, covering everything we'd missed and laughing at probably inappropriate things and this poor girl was just sitting there with wide eyes watching us. we must have looked ridiculous with our hands waving in the air, talking at each other. the older i get the more and more i appreciate and love that amanda of mine. i am so lucky to have her in my life. it's been just the two of us old married biddies in the family for so long, and now there are three of us? it's so weird! i can't believe alex is all grown up, and now i'm going to cry again. 

in the morning my mom came over with diet cokes and we all got ready and made important necklace decisions and put on our bridesmaid skirts for the first time (not recommended) and ripped our panty hose (that was me) and charged cell phones and passed the dry shampoo back and forth and found last-minute blow dryers in the closet. and then we were off! it was a tornado of impressive. 

runner-up MVP of the weekend goes to amanda's baby silas, who is just the chunkiest most wonderful specimen of fat baby. (with my uncle steve on the left and my dad on the right.) (oh, and uncles! when i first spotted my Lovin aunts and uncles at the groom's dinner the night before i burst straight into tears. i have an insanely great family, and i am a ninny.)

yay!!!!!! and welcome to the family, james!! he's gonna make a good brother-in-law. he is such a smart, solid guy, alex done good. he and brandon have become fast friends and we're both excited to spend more time with them in portland over christmas.

pictures. it was cold. we rocked it.

and then the party! huck was feeling better enough by then to come to the reception and dance his pants off. kid has moves, man! 

girl knows how to make an exit! congratulations you guys! oh my gosh the warm fuzzies!!!!!

and now with my brother on a mission and all the girls married off, my parents are just like . . . . . . . . . . . . .

now what.

p.s. huck on the flight out to utah...

aaand huck on the red eye home. (we were delayed about 4 hours on the tarmac. that was cool.)

hooray for alex! pass the chapstick!

WHILE YOU WERE OUT...

warning: this is basically a glorified instagram dump and i'm soooort of over instagram dumps, but it's like, i haven't blogged in so many years that i feel mentally blocked until we're all caught up. so... just, indulge me. whatever.

hi everybody! hi! hi hi! here's what you may have missed (pretend like you missed it) while we were off having christmas and travel and other things that generally aren't blogging.

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blurry photos of the weekend before christmas when we made the trek up to the bronx to see the train display at the bronx botanical gardens. it was un-real. we can't wait to go again next year.

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on christmas eve we attended a really fun dinner party thrown by some friends in the ward, set up huck's gifts under the tree once he was asleep, and generally stayed up wayyy too late like excited little kids.

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late on christmas day we flew into utah. and just look at my boys, will you? i like to pinch myself occasionally. i got to sit across the aisle from those handsome gentlemen and read an entire book cover to cover, uninterrupted. (i read gretchen rubin's happiness at home, which i was gifted at gretchen's release party way back in august and only now got around to reading. pats on the back, i am such a reader. and how much do i hate that word, "gifted?" thiiiiis much?)

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and then we were in the suburbs! cafe rio and target and fountain drinks galore and insane juice aisles. i had forgotten what it's like to shop in america. SO MUCH JUICE. henny finally got to try on his christmas jams, since he'd fallen asleep christmas eve in his party clothes. 

please to enjoy brandon's senior portrait. no, i know. bask in it.

it was real snowy. so we went sledding. brandon was so proud of that wipe out. "did you see that???" i almost never get to see brandon's daredevil side, and it's kind of a turn on... so long as he isn't holding my baby at the same time, that is.

it's important to stay hydrated in the desert.

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on possibly the coldest day of ever, the holbrooks took a road trip up to soda springs to finally "deal with our storage for once and for all" (more on this later). i found my antlers and i found our wedding album and we got arctic circle and peter pan's old halloween costume fits the huckleberry exactly perfectly so we'll call it a success.

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and then the holbrooks packed ourselves up and flew ourselves home. we'd missed the city, like we'd been gone a million years or something. and then i bought me a level-three winter coat like a grown up, 

so now we are all caught up!
holbrooks out