La Sagesse beach on a day with the biggest waves I've ever seen in the Caribbean.
Christmas cookie swap in the pavilion at Grand Anse Beach. I can't take credit for these adorable cookies, my friend Lizzy made them, but I couldn't eat them until I had a picture!
This was taken the night before we left Grenada (Dec. 22nd) at the light display. That is a giraffe, in case you can't tell. Quite a different sort of Christmas display than we're used to!
Thanks to the generosity of our family members, Bryant and I were able to return home for Christmas and New Year's. My favorite part about the flight home was the discovery of just how incredibly awesome the exit row seats are. Awesome enough that, despite Bryant's total aversion to spending money, we are now thinking of shelling out the extra $50 per person to always fly in the exit rows. We're talking about better-than-first-class leg room here. I checked.
I even took a picture because I was so excited. Honestly, Bryant started to get embarrassed by how much I was going on. "Seriously, Bryant, these seats are better than first class! Can you believe how much room I have?! Look at how far I can stretch out my legs!" He started ignoring me after a while. In my defense it was early in the morning and I was giddy with the prospect of eating Wendy's in the Miami airport at the end of the flight.
We loved the cold, the food (we had almost forgotten what things like beef, ice cream, apples, and fast food tasted like), and, of course, our families and friends. I wore the same pair of jeans and the same pair of tennis shoes every day for three weeks--don't worry, I washed my jeans at least once a week--and loved it. Also, my hair. I've never had so much fun doing my hair. It's so long! And I look so different when it's not crazy-curly!
We spent Christmas Eve morning with my family and then drove down to Bryant's parents house that evening to spend the night there and Christmas morning with them.
Here we are on Christmas morning. Seriously, I've never been so excited to curl my hair in my entire life. Later on that day, we headed to my grandpa's house for a white elephant exchange, to which my cousin brought what was perhaps the most perfect white elephant gift I have ever seen.
I'll give you a moment to soak it all in. She bought the Barbie at a dollar store, then used shampoo and a q-tip to stick her husband's trimmed beard hairs to the legs, slipped in a cheap razor and added the words "Shave My Legs" to the label. When I first saw it, I genuinely thought Mattel was making these things. Terrible.
We spent the next three weeks bouncing between the two families, and sometimes overlapping our time. One day while staying with the Van Leeuwens, we agreed to babysit Keagan (my sister's son). We ended up taking him to the planetarium along with Jared's (Bryant's brother) two kids, Caden and Bethany.
Here we are playing with the big electric ball. Keagan is the one in the green, Caden is in the blue.
And here I am with Keagan and Bethany right before we went in to watch the kid's film they were showing. Caden and Bethany LOVED it, but Keagan got bored after about 10 minutes and spent the next half hour doing headstands on the seat and running laps around the theater. Thank goodness it was in the dome theater because everyone was looking up and hardly no one witnessed the spectacle of Megan-the-incompetent-aunt trying in vain to make the two year old sit down.
On a related note, this is what he did when his mom came to pick him up a couple hours later. I got in the car to chat with Jess (my sister) for a minute and told Keagan to climb back into his seat. Turned around a minute later to find this.
Apparently squeezing into the small space above the seats is just as good as getting in your actual car seat.
We also got to spend some time with friends, at restaurants, and in movie theaters. I have no pictures to verify those claims, so you'll have to just take my word for it. New favorite movie: Austenland. Seriously. Hilarious. Even the guys who have seen it have thought it was funny, so if you haven't watched it, do so now.
The rest of our time was spent with family, and mostly Bryant's (since his parents helped us out with our tickets to come back, we thought it was only fair to spend more time with them). We went to an ice castle one day. Honestly, it was a man-made ice castle.
Just looks like a bunch of ice, right? Let me give you a few shots that put it in perspective.
Remember how tall I am? Yeah, I know, huge. And the ice was taller! Just think how tall that is! ;)
Another perspective shot. I can't believe someone ran enough water in the dead of winter to make this thing. It was a beautiful blue color, like a glacier, in most places and white in others. So pretty and unique! And just because it made me laugh:
This is what Bryant did when I told him to get closer to the ice so people would be able to see it in the pictures. "Is this close enough?"
And now, the random singular photos of some of our other favorite moments:
Tubing at Soldier Hollow with Bryant's siblings. Seriously, how tan am I? It looks fake when there is snow all around.
Keagan at Coldstone. The kid picked orange sherbet with M&Ms. And loved it.
We went on a hike up Little Cottonwood Canyon, on the Temple Quarry Trail. I hate to admit it, but I miss the snow. A tiny bit. Not enough to leave the beach, but a tiny bit.
Family and friends, we miss you all so much while we're away! Thanks to all of you who let us spend some of our time with you this holiday season!!
P.S. I've added a link on the sidebar to a great blog that was just started today by a group of childless LDS women. I'm not part of the group that started the blog, but I think it's a great resource and have added it to my list of blogs I will check every day. Please share it with anyone you know who is feeling alone in their struggles to have children!
