a frei family christmas.

so christmas eve we headed to the frei family cab in panguitch just as the snow storm started up.

luckily i had this christmas sweater babe to take me to our destination in safety.

tan really wears this sweater every year and it is my favorite.

christmas magic.

liisa orchestrated some real christmas magic and made everything into a magical old fashioned christmas. the family cut down the tree before we came, made the ornaments, cut out all the snowflakes and just made it into the best christmas at the cabin i had ever dreamed of. 

tanner thought outside the box and made this snowman ornament which stirred some friendly brotherly competition (surprise!). maddi talked about it here

of course liisa just put this beautiful nativity together while getting the christmas feast and other decorations together.

christmas jammie pic.

jordan refuses to participate in funny pictures after this photo

our christmas morning was great and tan spoiled me with lots of great maternity clothes, chick flicks and a perfume sampler from sephora that i can't get enough of. 

after lounging the morning away we threw on some cross country skis and snow shoes and headed out to the field behind the cabin for some snow fun with lincoln, maddi and jordan.

babe.

stud.

legit.

boss.

 natural.

 zoomin'.

 playin'.

 breakin'.

lincoln and tanner fought to the death after doing some races back and forth across the field with jordan.

we took off around noon on wednesday before the real snow storm started...but we caught up to it verrrry quickly.

let the records show that tanner frei requested this photo be taken.

closin' up shop.

see. this wasn't even the worst of the storm. maddi also talks about this on her blog but we caravanned for a bit before the summit (which was the worst of it all) until berk's car got stuck on this hill. berk, nick and lincoln tried pushing liisa's car for a little bit but she was stuck also sooo we decided to try our hand at the hill and what do you know! little baby civ didn't even get stuck. it really was a miracle. we headed to the top of the hill to wait while everyone else was pushed/towed up the hill by nick and the strong brothers left behind. (tanner is strong too - he just wasn't left behind)

 blizzarding at the top of the hill.

 greasy hair shot while we waited for the gang. we waited for about 10 minutes before everyone showed up and continued on our wintery journey which got scarier and scarier by the minute. the summit was a complete white out and the civ was so low to the ground that the snow would come over the car like a wave because we were in so deep buuut we still weren't stuck so we just prayed no cars were coming towards us and kept driving, driving, driving (at about 5 mph). it was the scariest drive of our lives but tanner seriously mastered the canyon and we never got stuck once or slid off the road. 

our normal journey back to STG takes about 90 minutes and we arrived about 4 hours after the usual time due to the storm and complications with berk's car and driving back and forth from parowan and cedar. but luckily everyone made it back in one piece - including dallas.

we were seriously so glad we made it back in time so we could go see greatest les mis that night. maddi and i even matched for the occasion.

 thursday was full of visiting friends and family. we met up with scott and lindsey and met their sweet little baby nicholas (who is lindsey's twin) and had lunch with them and the lamberts. then headed to the melo's house for leila's second birthday party (which was absolutely adorable and fun to meet up with craig & lin there!), and then headed over to visit with grandma joey.

our last couple visits with joey have been a little sad because she wasn't able to communicate with us very much but this visit was seriously a blast. we talked about baby names with her and even got to see her spunky (cursing) side come out a couple times! 

we finished the night by tanner going climbing with lincoln, brady and cason while i hung out at home with nick, liisa and maddi and watched 2012. so glad the world didn't end on 12-21-12 because we would have been in the ocean for sure.

we left early friday and were grateful for this beautiful scenery to keep us company on the way up to SLC.

we loved being able to have so much frei family time since we have only had a couple weekend trips here and there throughout the year. it was a merry merrry christmas indeed.