Our Holiday Adventure

Well its a brand new year and time for the first blog update of 2011! We had a great Christmas vacation this year which consisted of a lot of TRAVELING!!! We wanted to take advantage of the time we had off for the holidays to see as many people as possible and it turned out to be a great success! Our first journey was a rivoting 10 hour drive from Des Moines to Colorado Springs which is always a lot of fun! Althouth the drive wasn't that great we had a great time with the bennion family seeing movies and just having a great time! Claire especially liked dressing up Oliver with the tupperware bowls.
After a short stay in Colorado Springs we were dropped off at the Denver airport and we hopped on a plane and headed for Salt Lake City. It was Olivers first plane ride but he had a great time during take off and slept all the way there! What a great boy! Then after a 3 hour trip in a rental car we arrived in Blackfoot Idaho where the Christmas party really took off! Oliver was so excited to be with his cousin Madison!

He also loved meeting his Uncle Brandon and playing with Aunt Lacey

If there is one thing that is synonymous with Christmas at the Stokes house it is food! We ate so much we could have all popped. It was so Good! There were Cookies














And Pies












And dont forget the marinated filet mignon! Delicious!

Even Oliver enjoyed his first jar of baby food over the Christmas break! It was sweet potatoes and he loved it.

Well sure enough Christmas Eve came and we all had a visit from the pajama elfs! They brought us all some pretty snazzy pajamas Bradley even had star wars on his!

After Christmas was all said and done the partying was far from over! We went and spent two days in Utah to celebrate with the extended Stokes and Fillmore families. We had a really fun white elephant party with the Fillmores where Oli got to meet his great Grandma and Grandpa Fillmore!


Then Ellen and I stayed with Uncle Orvil and Aunt Patty which was of course a blast! Thanks Patty and Orvil for letting us crash your party! The next day we had a gourmet chinese dinner at Grandma Stokes houses and needless to say it was delicious also! After all of that parting we were just about done but we also got to stay at Grandma and Grandpa Watsons house for two days (one extra due to a winter storm) We felt so lucky that we got to see so much of our family during the same trip!

After all that fun we returned to Colorado for a day before making the exciting journey back to Des Moines! We found everything here just the way we found it and the new year is already treating us well! Thanks to everyone for such a great holiday season! And even though the sun has sent on 2010 we wish everybody the best of fortunes in the great new year of 2011!