Our Spontaneous Christmas Day Adventure!!!

We usually spend Christmas in California every year at my In-laws place. This year I had told Barry that I would rather save the money and just stay home. So we had a really enjoyable Christmas morning except for the fact that Tommy was in Texas :( We always miss him so much when he is gone! 

Our house was quite the disaster for the rest of the day... who wants to clean on Christmas??

Well, the weather that day was freezing and blizzarding (is that a word?) Barry especially hates the cold. So he came up with a brilliant idea! "Lets drive to California and get out of this crap. NOW!" After talking me into it and calling the border because I couldn't find my passport, we decided to go!

I had a roast in that was done so we pulled it out and threw it into the freezer (we would later get hot dogs for Christmas dinner on the way! haha) We packed in an hour. Took the Christmas gifts upstairs, left the garbage and loads of Christmas candy all over the house and walked out the door!

The weather was pretty bad when we got into Utah! But we made a stop at one of my favorite restaraunts Cafe Rio to see some of my family! 

I love them and don't' see them near enough! They wanted us to stay the night but honestly, I just wanted to get out of the weather! We saw so many cars spun out on the highway!! We were happy when at around 1 am we arrived at our hotel for the night! 

You can imagine my joy when I woke up in St. George, Utah to a blue sky, warm air and NO SNOW!!! I love St. George and spent a lot of time here as a kid. 

Our first stop was VEGAS!! I think it was even more amazing because it was WARM! 

 Vegas is so exciting! So much to do and so many fun things to see!

 Street Performers!

 And of course the kids LOVED M&M world!

 These are Ice pillars at one of the malls

 The Venetian Hotel is gorgeous!!

 We had to stop at another one of our favorite restaurants Grand Lux!!

 Then it was off to Palm Springs, one of our favorite places to be!

 We did lots of relaxing!

 We had to build our Christmas break puzzle!

Played games

 Went to see the house that my father in law is building to flip.

 Had warm walks in the sun!

 Bought loads of Trader Joes Salsa!

 Played in the pool, rested in the sun and read!

and of course visited our favorite restaurants... AGAIN. A common these right!

 Then it was time to head home again!

I'm so glad that Barry suggested this trip! Fun, Spontaneous and well worth it!

Myles

 

Myles Dallas Laron Ehlert

born Nov 6, 2012

Weighing 7 lb 12 oz

It was by far my hardest labor. My epidural wore off and I had pulled some muscles from the weight of the baby. I remember telling my husband that asking me to push against those pulled muscles was the equivalent of being asked to cut off my own finger. It was bad and hard and exhausting. I had labored through the night and by the end I was beyond spent. The silver lining is that after it was over, I could feel my legs and I was able to get right into the shower and feel refreshed.  

 My nephew Benson was begging to come to the hospital. Even in the middle of the night. Well first thing in the morning we got a call that he was downstairs and wanted to be in the room with us. It was so sweet and he stayed until I had to push, then quickly returned after to meet baby Myles.

 Grandpa Ehlert who Myles was named after (Laron)

 My memory of my first day with Myles is my most memorable one so far. I had him down my shirt the whole day almost!! It was such a sweet moment that I was excited to get since I wasn't able to have that time with Macy.

 Tommy was so excited to have a brother!!!!

 This is the beautiful quilt that Ingrid made for Myles. It's so perfect since his other middle name is Dallas!!

 Baby's first bath. The kids loved helping me. It is so fun to have a baby around.

We love baby Myles so much!!! He is pure sweetness, joy and smiles!