Christmas in Utah

On the night of Friday, December 19th, Dad asked me how much my bus ticket, that I got to get back to Bismarck, cost. After telling him around $150 one way, but then I looked it up online and a two-way turned out costing $327. Dad had decided that since I had expressed my desire to go to Utah for Christmas earlier, that that would be part of my Christmas present, a bus ticket there and back.

The Bismarck Ward Christmas Party was on Saturday, December 20th. Here's a picture of me there. We sat at the table closest to the stage near the center of it. I was glad of this because they were going to have a program after we ate. I had brought my digital camera and recorded video of most of the program, which turned out really well because we were sitting so close to the front.

The following Monday, Dad went to see about buying the bus ticket. He wasn't able to get one for that day, and he was told Christmas Eve would be the earliest, but we could check and see if there was any room on the bus on Tuesday evening, which we found out on Tuesday afternoon there was enough room for me to go then.

The bus ticket Dad got me had me leaving from Bismarck and going all the way to Provo, and then my return ticket was to leave Provo at around 4:00 pm on January 2nd.
The bus I took from Bismarck didn't get there until hours after the scheduled time. I left Bismarck at around 8 pm Tuesday night and got in to Billings, MT at around 3:30 am. We were informed that the bus going Far West was canceled, but the people going to Butte, MT were lucky (which was my next transfer location. I ended up being stuck in Billings waiting for the Butte bus for twelve hours. I finally boarded the bus to Butte at 3:30 pm on Wednesday afternoon. I got to Butte at 8:30 pm and as soon as I arrived in Butte, I immediately boarded the bus to Salt Lake. I got into Salt Lake at around 6:40 am, and I boarded the bus going to Provo at 8:32 am. I arrived in Provo at 9:33 am and waited until Rachel could come get me (she had to work until 11 am). My bus ticket had originally said that I was supposed to get to Provo at around 7 pm December 23rd, but with the delays I didn't arrive until 9:30 am December 24th. At least I got to Provo before any of our Christmas celebrations would be starting. Here's a picture of me after first arriving at Rachel and Sara's apartment.

After dinner, Rachel, Sara, Gizmo (Rachel's cat), and I got into the car and did what we've done for a few years now that we started when Mom was still alive. We drove around looking at Christmas lights while singing Christmas songs. This year I decided to record video of all of it, which ends up being a good 30 to 40 minutes of video.

Along the way, we got stuck in the snow, and Rachel had Sara and I get out to try to push the car out of it, we were doing that when a few kids from a house nearby came over and shoveled around the tires and pushed the car out for us.