Montana Christmas

As many of you know, we spent the holidays in Eureka, Montana this year! My parents have a "Bunk House" in the lower part of the backyard. They spent a lot of time and money making it a really nice place for people to stay in when they come to visit. We got it to ourselves while we stayed and it was so fun! It's just a cute little cabin, very rustic looking. Casey was in charge of keeping the fire going in the stove, since it was our main source of heat. Little did he know, he's got some mad wood-chopping skills!

Christmas Eve, we went up to Canada. There is a swimming pool up there that is open on the morning of Christmas Eve, and it's kind of become our family tradition to go up there and go swimming. The changed things around at the border a little bit and you used to be able to get across with just your birth certificate and drivers license, but they recently changed it, requiring you to have a passport. Casey has a current passport, but he thinks it got lost in a move somewhere along the way.

My mom called the border to see what options he had, if it there was any possibility he could go. If not, none of us were going to go, because of course we weren't going to leave him behind. The Border Patrol guy that she talked to said that they may hassle him a bit for not having it, but they can't legally keep him there if he's got his birth certificate and drivers license with him. We left it up to Casey as to whether or not he wanted to be hassled by the Border Patrol on Christmas Eve. He said he was fine with it, so we went up and had a good time. We kind of took over the pool and played a family game of water basketball. Good stuff.

Going in to Cananda is not the hard part. They let just about anyone cross the border. Getting back in to the United States is where it gets tricky. When we got back to the border, ready to be back in the country, I started getting nervous for Casey. I didn't know how they would handle it, or how mean they would be. He didn't seem to worried. Well, we pulled up, he asked for passports. Casey handed his birth certificate and D.L. over. The guy checked out  everything and told us to have a Merry Christmas. That was it! Not one word! He didn't even give him a warning! What relief!

The rest of the week we just kind of hung out. It got pretty cold outside some of the days, so we just stayed inside, played lots of games, put together some intense puzzles, the girls did some crafty things, like making cards, and the boys watched lots of football. Overall it was just a fun, relaxing week, just enjoying the downtime and preparing for the craziness of getting back to work, Casey trying to find a good part-time job,  and  both of us starting new semesters at school. Casey is SO excited to be back at BYU (starting tomorrow). It's fun to see him so happy about it!

We had a great holiday and we hope you all did too!

Love to all
xoxo