Thanksgiving to New Year's Vacations

Happy New Year! We have done a fair amount of traveling the last few weeks. We've gone from California to Boston and back to Provo in a month and a half. Goodtimes were had by all, but I still don't like long drives. However, driving does have it's benefits over flying, especially holiday flying.

THANKSGIVING: Nevada City, CA
This has become a bit of LaPierre Fam #7 Thanksgiving tradition. 2009 marked the third year in a row that we went to CA for Michelle and me.

Here's one of my favorite landmarks in Nevada. Unfortunately it's only about 3 hours into the drive (on the way out).

As you can see it's just a mountain. However, compared to most of the state this is something to look at. Michelle's family has a special name for this one from their countless trips to Oma and Opa's house in SLC. It comes from when they'd pass it in the winter when there was snow on the top half.

We had plenty of activities when we finally arrived. Having worn Turkey Trot/Feaster Five shirts since high school, I decided this year it's time I actually earned one. The other three I got from Coach O'conner. So this year Michelle and I signed up for the Turkey Trot race... A Thanksgiving Day 5K that weaves around the Nevada Union High School on a hill saturated course. Michelle's dad ran with us too, as well as a few dozen DeMartini relatives.

This is "UmbrEllie," one of my favorite cousin-in-laws.

Above is Trevor, #170, another favorite cousin-in-law. We wrestled last year at Thanksgiving Dinner, which is was awesome. He and his brother are scrappers. It Reminded me of when I used to wrestle Hunter at Christmas.

An honorable mention to Michelle's mom, that was working a booth at the race, Simon, who was our official photographer, and Peter, who wanted to run it but we didn't wake him up. It was alot of fun to run on trails that wind through the woods and hills rather than the flat, treeless, suburbia streets of Provo.

Here's a picture of the start. If you look really hard you can see Jon, Michelle, and the back of my head. (We're right below the third person from the left on the stands.) The whole activity had a sweet hometown feel. They even had a prayer before the start of the race.



Another en route picture. Aren't those trails divine?


Trevor just after finishing.


Below is my finish. I'm not pronating uncontrollably for the first time in history! Unfortunately the race photographer didn't get the other family members finishing.

One highlight was Jon carrying Damien, Trevor's brother, on his shoulders for the last quarter mile, which ended on the track. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of that.


After the race we were on to more activities. Two years earlier, in 2007, I first met Michelle's family, the DeMartini's. For those of you that asked how was it, the only way I could describe it was intimidating. Why? Meet Michelle's family...

No, this is not the governor, this is Peter, my brother-in-law. The picture says it all.

And some more...
Everyone's got guns! Those are my new cousin with shotguns.

In the middle, Timmy's walking around with his double barrel shotgun. The only time I saw one of these before was on video games, and it was usually the best weapon in the game. This gun is pretty hardcore. PS. Last year Timmy brought his six-shooter and was carrying it around the front pocket of his jeans. This guy is awesome. He's got more manhood in his pinky toe than Superman has in his fists.

Simon and Peter loading up the guns. Me, squinting with fear. Every year for Thanksgiving the DeMartini's go to the watering hole to shoot clay pigeons and other things. Nothing like being raised in a city where even the Far Right Wing Republicans don't think there is a need to own guns, and then you find your self in this situation. I had no idea what I was doing. But don't worry...

Even Michelle shoots!

However, this being the third year, I came prepared. This year Michelle and I packed our own guns...
I don't think they were nearly as intimidated by these as I was my first year with them.

Another picture of Timmy, this time throwing pigeons. Below is Anne, my new sister, with her boyfriend Bradley.There's a family legend about Timmy and Bradley. A year or two ago they went up to the same watering hole with their shotguns. Bradley went to the other side of the hole, and Timmy said, "Turn around and tell me if this hurts." So Timmy shot Bradley. Bradley said it hurt, but no puncture wounds. So, naturely Timmy turns around so Bradley can shoot him. Wow, I'm lucky we grew up in Boston. If Cris and Bryce had guns I would have been toast.

Simon and I at target practice. I think we should be partners in the FBI.


Again with my shooting partner. This time shooting each other's clay pigeons. I got better after a little practice, but still not up to par for the family.


The two newest editions to the Jon DeMartini clan. I'm one and Joey's wife is next to him.

Michelle and Anne got bored of shooting guns quickly, so they took alot of pictures. When they got bored of that they started posing for pictures. This was the best picture we could find.

Saturday morning the governor look alike from earlier brought me as a guest to the Nevada City Iron House to work out with him and a cousin. Going to the gym with Brent and PJ, I felt like I was part of some elite club. I hope we make that a tradition.
Though not a Thanksgiving tradition, we had some time to kill later in the day on Saturday so we went "Jeeping"... it's a jeep thing. I had never done that before so this was a new experience for me. It was freezing but worth the discomfort. As you can see, Michelle had the camera... hence she's not in any pictures... that's how it normally works.

Though it was my first trip, I think I caught on pretty quickly. Essentially, Jeeping goes something like this. You drive to a valley and look for a bank that looks too steep to make it up and you drive up it until you make it to the top, slide back down, or flip over and get stuck. Since I already "broke" the Jeep in August this was old hat for me.

Peter was manning "Mother Ship" as I call it. This was the pick-up that carried the 4-wheeler. Even though it's a street car they drove it up some pretty steep climbs. He handled that beast like it was Honda Accord. Good work Pedrito.

Simon and I went out on the 4-wheeler. He drove through the rivers, up the hills, and down them. He drove pretty fast too.
Then I took the wheel. Again, I never did this before. In an attempt to show off I almost flipped it. Luckily for Simon, he's still alive and kicking. Eventually it got so cold my thumb wasn't able to push the accelerator without twisting my entire body so I had Simon drive us back to the Mother Ship.


While Simon and I were playing around with the 4-wheeler, Michelle was in the Jeep going all over the place. Here's one of the "descents"of the day. Though you can't tell from the picture, it was around a 50degree angle. It was impressive.
Earlier in the week Michelle and I went to the RV lot (where Jon and Peter work) and drove the truck that Dad Demartini drove in the fair.

We didn't take any pictures of that instance. But if we did, I'd imagine it would look something like this...
These three pictures are from a few weeks after we left. The DeMartini men took the fair toy out for a spin. Keep in mind many of these drivers are in the earlier pictures. I'm sure mine didn't look this impressive. In my defense we didn't have anywhere to jump it on our little course by the RV lot. Speaking of jumps, how's this one?
It could probably go without saying that their day ended like this. It quickly lost a pulse and was declared dead later that night. It served well in it's short life (a little longer than 6 months)

All good things must come to an end, at least when school is involved. Break ended and we went back home. The trip back was fun. We met up with some cousins some where on the edge of Nevada. They were going to CA on their way back from SLC, and we were going the other way. We pulled off at a random exit to say hi and catch up for ten minutes. Coincidentally, he was the same one that was throwing snowballs at us at our reception. Apparently I attract snowballs in December... hence Cris's blog.

Another favorite place to stop is the Utah Salt Flats. Fortunately, this is only a few hours away from our destination... Home.

If you have a magnifying glass handy that sign says something about the salt flats being the home to the land speed records. In a way, this is a Mecca for some over-specialized sports nuts.

We got there just in time to catch the sunset.
I was sure to grab the camera so we could get some pictures of Michelle on here. At this point we had been on the road most of the day so we were both out of it. It's a long drive. We were able to dig out smiles for a picture.

And one last picture of the salt flats... away from Area 51... I think since the movie "Independence Day" they don't allow civilians to take pictures of the base.

Christmas was equally eventful for us. Michelle and I decorated when we got home from Thanksgiving...Last year Drew gave us his artificial tree because he was moving to Colorado for school and didn't want to pack it. Isn't it sweet?
As most of you know already (because your either family or close friends if you made it this far down the blog), Michelle and I were sick for the few days before Christmas. Michelle fought it off far better than I did. It peaked on our traveling days and the day after. We had a red eye flight (I can't think of a better way to celebrate our anniversary) to New York, then had to catch a bus to Boston which left from the other side of town. We had to take the subway then walk a couple blocks with our all our luggage. It was nice get home and have homemade cinnamon rolls waiting because mom waited to cook them for us. The family also decorated our room for our anniversary. Thanks guys.
Holding with LaPierre tradition we went to Shanghai for dinner after going to the temple as a family. It was fun to see the city. It was even better to be healthy (relatively) again.

Another favorite pastime, helping prepare dinner. Though there's a small militia in the kitchen, it seems there's always one less than too many. Being away from home we don't hear the piano very often so it was nice to hear the old LaPierre classics of whatever we memorized when we took lessons, particularly the Les Miserables performances. Way to go Katy and Betsy.

No Christmas Eve is complete without caroling and coloring a page in the jumbo coloring book. I don't know how we used to do it with twenty-four arms covering the page. Michelle is picking up on the tradition nicely as an over qualified MFA.

I had to put this in as a follow up to shotgun shooting section. This is one of the few activities that I grew up with that restore some of the confidence in my masculinity. I can't shoot great, but I can swing an ax, and a sledge hammer in this case. This was how we weeded the boyfriends out. As you can see, the two brother-in-laws are out there. They passed the test.

After a long season of traveling we finally arrived back home on New Year's day, exhausted and finished with traveling for a while.
Happy New Year's, we miss you guys already.