December 25, 2005

What a wonderful Christmas. Eric and I drove back to Utah to spend the Holiday with my family. It has been several years since I have been able to spend Christmas with my sisters Sunny, Jenny and my brother in law Jared. The restful vacation and time with family was just what we needed. We were a little bummed out not to see Eric’s folks hoping to go out to Oregon this summer for a visit and hopefully catch David and Wren. One of the best things about our vacation was NO WORK. I took a week and a half off. Eric had been interviewing with IBM and decided that even if he didn’t get the job he needed to continue looking, so he quit Advanced Surgical right before we left, and planned to start looking full time when we returned. Luckily IBM called and offered him the job while we were in Utah. As it turned out, he negotiated a better deal then he had with his previous offer, so maybe things were suppose to work out this way.
The day after we arrived in Utah we all went to see the latest Harry Potter. During the middle of it they had to make some repairs to the film and consequently gave us all free tickets. We used the tickets to go see King Kong after Christmas. If you haven’t seen King Kong, take my advice and close your eyes when the giant slugs come.

Another highlight was our annual McCoard family, Christmas Eve pig out dinner. For the pig out we all draw slips of paper that assign us the main dish or salad or dessert or drink etc… Then we all go to the store together and buy the ingredients for our favorite food (whatever we drew.) Then we all pile into the kitchen and cook it up. What comes after is a very unconventional mix of foods. When Jenny was little she drew the main dish and made us all eat fish sticks for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately for Eric he was assigned the bread for the 4th year in a row.

Christmas day was relaxing. We went to Sacrament meeting in the morning and then went home, exchanged gifts, and laid around for the rest of the day. Stoney gave Eric his old spotting scope and they went and looked at Sheep that evening.

A few days later we went to Temple square in Salt Lake to see the lights, tour the conference center and check out the new Joseph Smith exhibit. We love Joseph Smith. There is a new movie that they are showing about the life of the prophet. It was sold out for months so we hope to see it next time we are in Utah.

We were able to spend a lot of time with Sunny, my sister, who is usually hiding at her boyfriend John’s house. Sunny, my mother and I threw Jenny a baby shower. I made lots of pretty treats and was pretty proud of how domestic capabilities. Jenny invited just a few of her friends and it turned out to be very entertaining. My mother gave Jenny one of her hippy 1970’s birthing books. Basically the book contains many naked photos of hippies giving birth. We passed the book around, laughed, scared Jenny and grossed Eric out.


And now your moment of ZEN……
Well Happy Holidays to all of those that we were not able to see. We love you all and miss you very much.

Love,

Eric and Hannah