For Christmas we decided to head on up to Utah for a couple weeks! It was freezing! But on the plus side it did snow on Christmas day which made it all worth it..
We decided to drive the 19 hours one way, mainly so we could have access to a car and because I was nervous to take a two-week-old on a plane anyway.
Allira was a trooper in the car! She slept pretty much the whole way, only waking up if we went more than 3 hours without stopping to feed her (most the time I had to feed her in the back seat parked at a gas station) She was the best road trip buddy ever!
She just loves her car seat! Falls asleep as soon as we put her in
On the way there, with only 2 hours left until we reached Provo we got stuck in the canyon in a huge blizzard. It was backed up for miles and traffic was travelling at like 4 miles per hour. Im not kidding. There were cars that had slid off the road and it hadnt been plowed yet and the snow was really coming down... But after an hour delay we were out of the canyon!
We stopped by Alex's parents house to introduce Allira to her other grandparents. She was just adored!
Then we headed to Saratoga Springs to my parent's place where we would be staying for the next two weeks.
These are some photos from Allira's first Christmas:
Big Yawns!
Patrick had his hands full haha
So Mariah was holding Allira when she spilt MnM's everywhere.. And one melted to Allira's head..
Santa's favourite Baby
Allira is just counting down the days till she has a cousin... Any day now...
Allira was blessed on the 28th of December 2014
Afterwards we all went back to Alex's parents for brunch
4 Generations photo
Daddy and Grandpa with their Christmas presents from Allira
The Love..
Richard and Ann's Surprise 50th Anniversary Party
Another huge reason we went to Utah for Christmas is because all the Cope siblings had been planning a surprise 50th anniversary party for their parents for a whole year and decided to throw it on the 29th so everyone could be there!
So much work and effort went into it and it was such a beautiful and emotional party.
Each sibling put together a centerpiece for a table representing their childhood.
This was Alex's:
Setting up
All the Cope cousins. Allira is #35!
The view from the JSB room
It was the first time in over a decade that Alex's family have all been in the same place at once. With 12 siblings spread out over the states thats easy to understand! He had the best time just hanging out with everyone. The Copes are such an awesome family, I'm so glad I get to be part of it. They always have the best times together!
For New Years Eve we left Allira with her grandparents and went to the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. They had all these different activity rooms to kill time before the midnight ball drop.
In one room they had 2015 beach balls of all sizes that were being thrown and kicked all around the place. You cant really see much from my phone pictures but they were awesome!!
A Lego room, one to create and one to display huge creations that were made by pros
And a bouncy house room!! We spent the most time here haha well until Alex whacked his knee on the cement floor then we decided to give it a rest
They had tonnes of other rooms I didnt take photos of, like a glow-in-the-dark hula hoop room where they had a huge wall you could sign your name on with glow-in-the-dark neon markers.
A live band room
A food room
A latino music room
And a DJ that was playing music outside underneath the huge mirror ball
After it dropped at midnight we headed home to see our baby. It's amazing how much you can miss someone!
We headed back to Texas on the 2nd, and got stuck in yet ANOTHER blizzard! This one was in New Mexico and hit at night time. The roads were so bad we were going to cut the night short and get a hotel but they were booked out for miles! We ended up finding one an hour away which sucked.. But we made it. The next day we thought the roads would be better- we were wrong. In an hour we saw 18 cars and 2 semi trucks all run off the road, one truck was even tipped over, it was so scary.
We were unfortunately number 17 of the cars- and yes it was me that was driving but in my defense the two cars in front of us started sliding on the icy roads and I swerved off the road to avoid hitting them coz the brakes weren't working! After Alex dug us out of the snow he pulled some crazy good moves and sonehow got the car out of the medium and back onto the freeway. My hero forever.
We made it home safely, 6 hours later than we had planned. Feels weird being home now..
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