Back in Rexburg

Well, we are home safe. Thanks to all of you who were praying as we traveled today! The road were not as bad as they could have been. So, tomorrow back to work for both of us. We are praying for all of you still traveling. Drive safe!

Draper 2008 Christmas card and letter.

Well, another year past and we are moving along quickly in life. I finished school in July and graduated with a BS in biology. That sure is nice to be finished. I love going to school and am sad to know that schooling is over for me, at least it is for awhile. Robert will be done with school next year. He is going to have a BA in communications and an emphasis in advertising. We are a little nervous about this because of the way the economy is right now. He is a little discouraged because his teachers all tell him that the communications field is not such a good field right now because it is the first to go when companies are doing budget cuts. So, if anyone has any job offers or suggestions for internship PLEASE let us know. We are excited to be able to see the end of our days at BYU-Idaho. One last winter in the Rexburg cold. There really is not much to report on for this past year. We have had some fun as you have noticed through our previous posts and enjoyed our family time! We have been married for almost 5 years and been in love for almost 10 wonderful years.
Well, with that I guess we will announce that we are building on to our family. I am between 6 and 7 months pregnant. I am due March 7, 2009! We are SO excited! We have been trying for quite awhile for a child and feel so blessed that God has decided to grant us this opportunity in life. My pregnancy has been a breeze! I really feel no different, other than the movements that I began to feel around Thanksgiving. It is fun and yet so surreal. We are not finding out the sex of the baby. We want you all to stayed tuned until after the baby is born to find out.
Really, that is all the news that we have. Check back for updates and more information as often as you would like. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and enjoy the short week left in the 2008. And thank you to everyone who sent us a Christmas card of their own this year. It's always nice to get some mail other than bills and junk!

The green wrench that almost stole Christmas

So, Robert and I were planning on going my family's house is Libby, MT for Christmas. On Sunday we were headed to Idaho Falls to pick up some friends from the airport and a wrench light showed up on our dashboard while driving. The car began to loose power and chug. Our friends flight was delayed because of the snow, so we turned around and didn't drive our Fusion. Needless to say that was an adventure trying to pick up our friends from the airport.
Here is that side story.... Meg and Brandon Hebdon were suppose to fly in Sunday at 10pm into the Idaho Falls airport and had asked us to pick them up. They called because their flight was delayed at about 8:30pm. No problem, we were just going to pick them up at 10:30pm instead. So, we left and that is when the car dash light turned on. Well, Meg text me and said that their plane should land in IF at about 12am. Okay, Robert and I left again, this time in our metro to pick them up. Well, we get almost to Rigby and Meg text again saying that they plane could not land, and they turned around and flew all the way back to SLC. Finally, I picked them up the next day at about noon. Those poor guys, they have one of those nightmare holiday travel stories to tell.
Anyway, back to out Christmas plan store.... So, we called Monday morning to get the car in the to dealership because it is under warranty and of coarse they could not get us in until Tuesday at 1:30. We were wanting to take off Wednesday, Christmas Eve after Robert got off work in the morning. The weather was not looking good because we had had snow storms all weekend and they were suppose to continue through Christmas. It was looking very unlikely that we would get out of Rexburg fro Christmas. We were sad! But, the car turns out that nothing huge needed to be fixed and all turned out well. Robert and I decided to go ahead and go to Libby when he got home from work on Christmas Eve. The drive was not bad and we made it here in under 9 hours. (Usually in the summer it take about 7 and 1/2 to 8hours.)

We had a great Christmas with family. Kira flew home from CT, and Josh and Shannon and his two girls came over from Kalispell. Christine, my sister in-law was here too. It was fun! We relaxed, ate, played games, and enjoyed family time just as Christmas should be. It snowed in the evening on Christmas Eve and all morning on Christmas. It was wonderful. We will be headed back to Rexburg Saturday or Sunday. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well.
These are pictures out my parent's window on Christmas Day! Enjoy the view!

The beginning of Christmas vaction

Yesterday Robert finished his last class in the afternoon and is done with school until the beginning of January. We are both so excited. Funny thing happened last night. I got off of work early and we were wanting to celebrate. However, it was graduation night and Rexburg is packed with parents and others celebrating. So, we decided to stay in. We watched some Christmas movies and we were both falling asleep just after 9pm. Boy are we losers. The first day of vacation and we got so bored that we went to bed earlier than we have in months. We got a good laugh at ourselves.
Below are This and That curled up for a long winters nap. Aren't they so cute! I guess we keep our house a little cold because even our cats wrap up in blankets.

Here is our tree. The weather beat us! On Monday night for family home evening we got out the fake one and put it up. Don't get me wrong I think it looks great, but the pine smell is missing. I guess we didn't spend any money and our house looks good.
This is a sunset just the other day. Robert took an amazing picture of it. It is my favorite color, orange! Today though we woke up to about 2 inches of snow. YEA! But now we are going to have to get snow tires. That is a budget killer.

O Christmas Tree

Robert and I were going to go get our first "real" Christmas tree yesterday, but he had church meetings in the morning and so we put it off until this morning. Well, we woke up to snow just barley covering the ground at 4:15am when Robert got up for work. We were okay with that and were still planning on going. I was a little excited about the snow because that meant that we would see all the trees and things with snow. It would make it just a little more special. So, I went back to sleep and got up just after 7:00 to be ready to go when Robert got off of work at about 7:30-8:00. It was snowing again. Robert called and said that there was a lot of wind and he was sliding around on the roads a lot when going to work. So, it has been snow which I like and am not sad about at all. The only thing is....
No tree today. Hopefully it will be soon that we get our tree, but we don't have many decorations and the house looks a little bare. We are counting on our tree to make our home look a little more like Christmas.

The rest of our Thanksgiving trip.

On Wednesday my sister Amy flew in from Texas to spend the holiday with us. That day we ate at an Indian buffet in West Hartford where Kira lives. Great food. That was all the excitement that day.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we got up and started making dinner. What a wonderful dinner we had. Kira was asked to have 4 missionaries over for dinner and they showed up right before dinner was ready. We played some games throughout the day and ate and ate and ate.

Friday morning we drove back to the JFK airport in New York City and began our travel back west. We left super early thinking there would be holiday traffic and it would take a twice as long to get to the airport. Well, it didn't. We arrived at the airport just after 10 am and our flight did not leave until almost 3 pm.We got into SLC at about 9 pm and stayed with our friends, the Loeras. The next day was just a day to chill and relax. After it got dark we went to temple square and looked at all the Christmas lights. What an amazing spirit of Christ there was. There were 2 nativity scenes set up in life like size.

This was gorgeous! It was a nativity set floating on the water with candles floating in it. Above is a close up of Joseph, Mary and Christ. Below shows the SLC temple's reflection in the water.

Here is the other nativity they had there. There were wise men to the east and also shepherds to the west. This scene was big. There was every detail of the story and as people gathered around, over an outside speaker, the story of Christmas was told. Also, at the end modern prophets bore their testimonies of this wonderful occasion.

A picture of the SLC Temple from the street as we were leaving. Beautiful!

After the lights we drove the 3 hours home and arrived safely to our cats at about midnight Saturday night. It was so sad to know it was over, but great to be home.

Icing on the cake in Boston.

Here is a picture of Boston at night from the dock of the ferry that we took to crossed the harbor and get back to the car. Thankfully we did not have to walk all the way back to the car!



After getting to the car we went to the Boston temple. What a wonderful place to end such a perfect day. The temple of coarse was wonderful and beautiful. After the temple, home we went. We got back to Kira's place at about 1:00 am.