Merry Christmas from Elma, WA

Well, here we are in Elma for the Holidays. Kent and I, with the help of our amazing friends and neighbors Heidi and Terek (and baby Trapper) packed up our truck on Saturday night. We finished around 1am and were planning on leaving sometime Sunday to drive home for Christmas. However, thanks to my spontaneous crazy nature, I suggested to Kent that instead of going to sleep for a few short hours, we should just leave right then. So, on Sunday morning at 1:45 am, we left Idaho Falls and drove to WA, having not slept since 8:30 am Saturday. To top it off, we drove straight into that great Arctic Chill storm everyone has been hearing about in the Northwest. It snowed HARD the WHOLE drive, closing I-84 and forcing us to take another route through White Pass to get home. We averaged a blazing 42 mph the WHOLE trip, making our normally 12-13 hour drive a whopping 21 hours of snow, ice, and memories!!!! We arrived sometime around 11pm Sunday night, having been awake for 40 hours, and driving for 21 of those hours. Yuck. Fortunately, we are planning on flying back to IF on Sunday--let's hope the flights are on time!
We've had fun here in Elma so far! We spent all day yesterday building Elma's first 8-foot igloo! It's big enough to fit my family inside, and we can all stand up straight in it! We have also enjoyed sledding down the hill to our river, and jumping off the edge of the same hill; something we have appropriately named 'cliff jumping.' Last night we were also able to make the icy drive to Chehalis to celebrate our cousin Joey's 22nd birthday! Happy Birthday primo!!! So, here we are on Christmas Eve, loving our families and friends, and looking forward to the next few weeks. We are going to miss our home in Idaho Falls more than I can describe here, but we are grateful for the good times we've had there. After Washington, we have El Salvador, and then our 21 state Road Trip of a lifetime out to Boston! We are blessed! Merry Christmas all!

Moving Sale!!!

BUY OUR HOME!!! BUY OUR HOME!!!

Well thanks to many interested buyers, all we have left is our wonderful bed. Well, that and our house. They're both still there so let us know if you'd like one or the other or both! Let me know if you are interested: nixon.kayla@gmail.com,

Thanks!

King Size Bed, Box Spring, and Frame: $750

BUY OUR HOME!!!

I'm back!

Well, after quite a long break since I originally created this blog, I am, at last, back again. Life has been a whirlwind these past several weeks. Kent and I have lived in our wonderful home for a year this month, and we have loved every minute of it. We have definately made some incredible friends up here and created some wonderful memories. We went to Yellowstone in November on a whim. We just kind of woke up one Saturday and thought, 'hey, let's go to Yellowstone.' We did the Lower Loop and Jackson in an afternoon, ending with an Old Faithful viewing at 9:00 at night! We enjoyed hiking through the beauty up there and are so glad we had that opportunity!

December has dealt us an interesting hand. We've been looking for jobs in the area, but unsuccessfully so far. So as of now, our house if For Sale (so sad!) and may be moving to Boston in a few weeks!

So, since we're moving after Christmas, I decided to graduate this semester! So my parents and Opa came up this past weekend, and I GRADUATED! It's funny how I transferred up here after Kent graduated, did 2.5 semesters at BYU-I, and now I have a BS degree from here! Haha, anyway I have a 4.0 up here, and I AM DONE WITH SCHOOL! (unless I go crazy and decide to go back for something...we'll see) Kent was Awesome and wrote a little song (to the song from Top Gun) and made a banner that he hung at Applebee's. We all went to dinner there and it was hanging up, and he broke out into song right there in front of everyone! It was awesome! He also planned a little graduation party in this cool loft thing at Hogi Yogi, where he, my parents, sister, and Opa had food and played Wii for a couple hours! It was hilarious watching my parents work the Wiimote...haha.

Well, now that I am done with school, I get to clean and pack and pack and clean. We are driving both of our cars to WA this weekend for Christmas, and we will leave my truck and a load of our stuff there for safe storing until we come back again someday. And on January 1st, we are headed to El Salvador for TEN glorious days! So Merry Christmas all and until next time, let it snow, because that's all it's doing up here in Idaho Falls anyway.