Long and Boring Christmas Post

First off, I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas!! Ben and I went up to Oregon this year. We were going to leave Tuesday morning around 8:00am until we realized that a snow storm was heading towards Utah and since we were driving, we decided to leave at midnight (basically right when I got home from working a double shift at work.... phew!) As soon as we crossed the Utah/Idaho border, we hit the storm. I've never seen so many accidents in my life. We were going about 30 MPH for a few hours. There was at least 40 miles of a single sheet of black ice....As we were driving, Ben decided to change lanes.... ends up that Ben didn't decide to do anything! The wind was so strong that it made the decision for us and pushed us right into the next lane!! After that, we decided that maybe it was getting a little dangerous to be driving (with the wind, the snow, oh yeah, and not being able to see the road since it was so dark outside....) so we pulled over at a rest stop and took a long nap in the car (did I mention that there were 5 of us in our little Corolla? we were not in a good mood....). We made it okay although there were a few slick spots. And when we finished our road trip, we seriously pulled into our garage, parked, got everything out, unpacked, then my dad comes home and says that we have 2 flat tires.... ends up the tires were completely shredded on the inside (whatever that means..) Good thing we made it home! And thanks mom and dad for the 2 new tires.... :)

Christmas here has been great! All the K-moku kids decided not to buy anybody Christmas presents because we were going to go to the Nike Employee store here in Oregon. Everything there is at LEAST 50% off which is awesome for us because we were in need of some soccer cleats. Nike has a limit on how much money you can spend at the store and let's just say that Ben and I came close to having to put stuff back on the shelf....... At least we won't need to buy cleats for the next year! :) The next picture is JUST the shoes we bought....And if your name starts with a "J" and ends with "acob", don't look too closely at the next picture.....









On Christmas Eve, my dad decided we needed to start a new tradition(it's never too late!) and I think it's one that is going to stick around. We challenged another family in our ward to a game of basketball. It was fun just to play around and goof off. Riena and I just wanted to try out our new basketball shoes (which I think are pretty sweet). Ben had to join the other team because one of their sons had to work and I think that's why my family lost. Don't let Ben ever fool you anymore.... Soccer is NOT his only sport!!









Day after Christmas, we headed to the Oregon coast for a day of crabbing! It was fun but so frustrating! Oregon has these crazy laws about only getting a certain size of crabs and you can only get males.... after a full day of crabbing, we had a TON of little crabs that we had to throw back and only 1 crab that was the right size.... but it was a female! Nevertheless, we had lots of fun. The coast is beautiful and we got to eat at Moe's. Seriously, the best clam chowder in the world!!










For our 3rd year anniversary, Ben and I aren't going to do anything big.... I can't believe it's been 3 years! I'll have to post pictures later since this post is going up before we actually go but we're going to go to dinner and then to the Blazer's basketball game(free tickets, good seats....awesome!) And during our trip to the coast, we found this!!









We're heading back to Utah on Tuesday.... don't know what time yet but we're going back to work and school. Hope you all had a great year and will have an even better one this next year!