Ruby Reba: Christmas week

Monday Chris and Ellie went with my family to a place called Kangaroo Zoo where they have all sorts of air filled blow-up toys for Ellie to bounce on with cousin Benjamin and her aunts and uncles. Ellie had such a good time that she didn’t want Kangaroo Zoo to close and she wore herself to exhaustion long before we read the story of Jesus’s birth before bedtime. But that was ok, because it gave Santa lots of time to come and leave her an enormous Dora coloring book and a tea set. (And to eat Christmas cookies she made and to feed his reindeer her reindeer snack from preschool).

Ellie got up at her usual early hour Christmas morning, but she was very good about waiting for Benjamin and Moira (and all her aunts and uncles) to wake up before she went in to open her presents. Well, actually she helped wake them up, but it was my idea because really, who can sleep after 7 on Christmas morning? After present opening, Chris and Dad started a prime rib roast that was supposed to take 5 hours, but ended up being done in about 1½. Even so, it turned out delicious—1/2 medium and ½ rare and almost all of it devoured by 45 hungry members of my Dad’s family who came later that night. Ellie played happily with my younger cousins Ainsley, Emma, and Jordan, and Moira took a liking to my uncle Ron. She always looked for him when she came in the room and then said Hi! vigorously until he responded.

Things were going great until Moira got sick Wednesday night. It was too much to hope that she’d just eaten too much, because the next day I felt ill, then Ellie got sick and then both my parents caught it by Friday. Chris and I had planned on going skiing and visiting some friends, but those ideas went, as it were, down the toilet. But really, it’s just not Christmas vacation until someone gets the stomach flu.

So, with Chris still feeling a little queasy, we left Utah Saturday morning and drove west into the eastern bound weather. I’m not sure when this happened to me (perhaps in Nebraska?) but somehow, driving 10 hours doesn’t seem as daunting—even if it does hold the possibility of a storm. Chris and I talked and the girls watched so much Dora that Moira now asks for “Do Do” and knows when to holler both MAP! and [Swiper,] NO [swiping]! Oregon was a mess, especially the pass through the Blue Mountains that we had wanted to go through in daylight, but instead hit at night fall during a thick snowstorm. Chris warned me that I shouldn’t turn around to comfort/distract Moira if things were ugly in the pass, so I was a little on edge. You know that part in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers where they smuggle the girls through the snowy pass and every brother is holding his breath while he clamps his hand down on his future bride’s mouth? That was me, only instead of clamping my hand over the girls’ mouths, I kept handing back crackers and pushing “repeat” on a DVD of kids songs from the 80s. When we finally came down Cabbage Hill (after 2½ times through “I Love My Marbles”) I wanted to scream and holler and close that pass for the winter.

Today we went to church with Danny, Katie, Kenzie, Zoey, and Grace. And we were not that loud.

The moving company agreed to let our friends Katherine and Stephanie act as proxies, which means that Chris and I are free to go look at houses tomorrow instead of flying back to Columbus to watch them repack all of our boxes. Ellie has asked for Henry and Kassie a few times, but with the holidays and everything, we haven’t had much opportunity to get homesick (Ohio sick?). But it still feels like we’re visiting, so I’m sure the realization we’re here to stay will hit soon enough.

As a side note, where we’re at gets less annual rainfall than Arizona and has only 8 hours and 40 minutes of day light right now. I’ll stop before I make all of you want to move here.

Here are some pictures that multiple people have told me I can download right onto Chris’s laptop by inserting the memory card directly into a SD drive, without a camera cord. I feel silly that I didn't think of it earlier.

The gingerbread church/temple before Cameron and the cousins got it: