Christmas and New Year's

I can't believe it's 2010 already! December and Christmas flew by. Keith only had Christmas and New Year's off from work so we hurried up to Idaho to spend as much time with his family as possible on those two weekends. I spent the month baking treats and Christmas shopping between work days. When we finally made it to the ranch we enjoyed many fun family activities.

On Christmas Eve we made it in time for the ward Christmas party, where we we able to join the family in singing some cowboy Christmas carols. It is so fun to hear Keith sing because he gets really into it and isn't afraid to sing loud. He even adds special touches like instead of the ring we had to repeat in one chorus he sang ring-a-ling-a-ling several times and actually made it sound good. He is funny. Christmas morning was filled with many great gifts and happy smiles. We had a delicious Christmas feast in the afternoon after playing with all the gifts (which with the Crandall family means shooting all your new guns). Keith and Clay couldn't have beamed more as they tried to show each other up with their shooting skills. At night we told stories and laughed with Keith's siblings. We also had a fun day of ice skating. Keith and I have perfected our paired skating skills and are now ready for competition. :) Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so we didn't get any pictures. We ate lots of food and treats and hot chocolate! It's not a holiday without the treats!

New Year's Day was again filled with shooting since Keith bought a couple boxes full of clay pigeons (which I learned are not actual birds, but are round fluorescent orange discs that can be flown in the air with a funny chair contraption). I found it was a little above my skill level to shoot something that is moving, but I had a better record than all the boys at shooting Keith's new 9mm gun (for those who are not from utah or idaho and no very little about guns this is the kind in the movies like oceans 11 that are small and scary guns people use to kill each other). So you could say I am adapting pretty well to the ranching lifestyle. We did some other activities other than shooting like playing card games and watching movies. Also it snowed so we played in it and Clay pulled Deseret and I around on a sled with the four-wheeler. It was pretty neat to watch Keith's dad use a big tractor to plow away the snow from the driveway all the way to the road. We went to the hot pots in Lava Hot Springs while it was snowing, which was way fun! As we were leaving to come home (literally in the car backing out of the driveway), Keith's dad saw a rat out by the barn and shouted to Clay and Keith to get a gun. You wouldn't believe how fast Keith and Clay ran out each with a gun in hand loading the bullets in crazy fast mode. It was a race. I don't know who shot it first, but I know they both shot it enough times that no one would doubt it was dead. It was hard to come home to regular life again, but we sure had a fun holiday time!