Holiday Fun and Adventurous Travels

As Brad mentioned we went down to Salt Lake City for Christmas this year and got to stay at my sister's new house. My sister, Katie, is now less than a month away from her due date!! She is going to have a little baby girl named Alice Cameron Stanger. I am so excited for her and I cannot wait to see my new little niece. I am amazed how I come to love Aiden more and more everyday. Every day there are moments where I just feel overwhelming joy at watching him grow, learn, and show such unconditional love and such pure innocence. Being a mother is the most wonderful thing to experience. So, I cannot wait for Katie to have these same moments and opportunities with her little girl.

I got a little side tracked...haha.....So Christmas was so much fun with my sisters and my Mom and my little brother. The girls did a lot of shopping and we played a lot of Cashflow and watched a lot of movies together. (Cashflow is a board game that we discovered is lots of fun!) It went by so fast! 5 days was not enough time together. Aiden got a jolly jumper from Grandma Lucy and he loves it! :) He has always been a big jumper and loves to bounce so this was a perfect gift for him.

We came back to Coeur d'Alene for New Years and we had fun playing Bunko with the whole Griffitts clan. Brad's best friends Mike and Chris were in town and we had tons of fun hanging out with them and catching up. Brad and I both also saw the movie Avatar twice :) It is a fantastic movie and we highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Brad and I were pretty happy to look back on our New Year's goals for 2009 that we accomplished. Brad got into medical school!! This was our #1 goal and we were so happy that we are going to Kentucky this summer. Some of our other goals included preparing for Aiden's arrival and that also went well and we are so blessed to have him. Another one was also for Brad to graduate from BYU in Mechanical Engineering, which also came to fruition. All in all this year has been such a wonderful year full of many many blessings. We are excited for what is in store for 2010.

After New Year's I went to New Jersey to visit my best friend, Alison, who I grew up with. I hadn't seen her since my wedding so it was fun to see her and her family again. We did a lot of shopping together. One shopping excursion was at the Shore Hills Mall, a very ritzy mall with TONS of stores. It has all the designer stores like Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, Neiman Marcus, etc., but it had lots of other stores too that I love such as Anthropologie. I love that store! I got to see New York City for the first time, although it was a pretty quick little drive through the city because it was too cold with Aiden to walk around outside. We also went and visited Alison's school Franklin & Marshall. I got to meet a few of her friends and co-workers and we went to a really yummy Indian restaurant. The last day there Alison and I got pedicures together. It was a really fun trip! Before leaving I was really stressed out about the plane ride out there and back all by myself with Aiden, but Aiden was SO good. I found out that he is a really good traveler. I could tell that I was being looked after on my trip. It was such a blessing that everything worked out so perfectly. (Pictures and video will be coming...I need to download all of them still)

Now we are just settling down after the Holidays and all our traveling. Nothing much else to report. In a few months my brother Tim is getting married in San Antonio, Texas and that will be our next trip :) I am excited to get the chance to see all of my family again and I am so happy for Tim and Ruthi. That is all the news for now. Hopefully we will be better about posting the next while. We love all of you guys!