Christmas Break

As the long winter in Idaho began Shane and I brainstormed some ideas on how to enjoy the season a bit more. There are many good things about the place we live, but the weather is not one of them. Winter is long, cold, and dark. I find myself really feeling down about halfway through February every year, which is dissapointing because at that point we're only maybe halfway through the winter here. One of the things we decided to try was skiing. Our thinking being that if we had a cold weather sport to look forward to we might not hate it so much.

So the day after Christmas we took the kids skiing. I have skied one time in my life, and this time I decided to try snowboarding. The kids were great sports. While Max and I played on the bunny hill Shane took Mason up the lift. I sort of thought he was crazy for taking him, but a few minutes later Mason and Shane came cruising down the hill. Mason was in love, he told me that he wanted to do this every day.

Encouraged by Mason's good experience this time we all went up the lift for a run down the hill... Now just for a minute look at my smiling face, full of excitement...

All the way up the lift Mason gave me a pep talk, telling me how much fun I would have, and how easy it was. I hopped off the lift snowboarded about eight feet and fell flat on my face, we all laughed it off as I got up and dusted myself off. Little did I know that eight foot run would be the longest of the day for me... the next hour of my life would go like this: I would snowboard a few feet, fall down, spend the next 5, 10, or 15 minutes (down time got progressively longer each time) trying to get back on my feet only to go a few feet and fall down again. I'm not gonna lie it was pretty awful. Shane was busy helping Max, and Mason got tired of waiting for all of us and said he'd meet us at the bottom.

When I finally got to the bottom I found Shane in the lodge frantically searching for Mason who was lost. There were a nervous few minutes while my firstborn was located. Whille I was still on the mountain and Shane was helping Max, Mason wanted to go inside and warm up so Shane told him to meet him the in lodge, but when he got there a few minutes later no Mason was too be found. We finally found him outside the lodge unable to unbuckle his board on account of his freezing fingers. Shane felt really awful, and we were all relieved to find him. After we got Mason some hot chocolate to warm him up, he felt much better.

So all in all it was a good day. Mason and Max had a blast... me not so much, but even though I didn't have a great time on the mountain I could see how it might be fun some day in the future. We decided to try it again, but with an actual lesson for Max and I.

A few days later we decided to visit my family for a few days. On the way down Shane and I joked that Karen and Jim's house was our "cabin". It seems everyone in Idaho Falls has a cabin to go to on the weekends. We don't have a mountain retreat, but we have my parents' house in Salt Lake and we really enjoy visiting them when we can get away. It might have something to do with the good food and free babysitters.

One of the things we did while we were down there is go to a Gorgoza park in Park City. It was a beautiful sunny day and we all had so much fun

The kids especially thought it was awesome to make themselves into a train and let me pull them both up the hill.

On New Year's Eve Shane and I went to see Les Miserables, which was very touching and I noticed there was much sniffling in the audience as Val Jean sang his last notes. Then we went home and rang in thenew year with my mom and dad. It was a lovely low key holiday. The next day we returned home and it was back to real life for us.

 

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Christmas

We had such a lovely Christmas this year. I know its February, but its never too late to get things written down, right? Believe it or not, this is the first time we have ever spent Christmas morning with just our family. I was worried we might feel lonely, but we had a great time.

The night before we had everyone in Shane's family over for dinner. We put the kids to bed early, but around ten or eleven that night Mason wandered out of his room bleary eyed and announced, "Merry Christmas everyone!" Poor guy he thought it was the big day already.

After being up in the night, the boys didn't wake up very early, and finally I got too excited and convinced Shane that we should wake them up. We opened all the presents. Mason in particular was hoping that Santa would bring him a particular Lego set. The very Lego set that happened to be sold out in every single store in town and online. Mason was quite concerned, but ol' Santa is an excellent shopper and did in fact deliver one Vampyre Castle under our tree. Mason was delighted.

Max had asked for Monsunos and they also appeared under the tree.

Then we spent the next three hours building Legos and putting together toys.

It was such a nice relaxed morning. We all really enjoyed it.

Later in the afternoon the rest of the family came back over for dinner and more presents and hanging out. It was great to see everyone. I love having a houseful, especially on the holidays. I think its because it reminds me of my house growing up. Because my grandparents lived with us and my grandma was not at all mobile every holiday was a party with just about every relative in town showing up at our house sometime during the day. As a child I loved it. Now as an adult I really appreciate what a good sport my mom was with her more the merrier attitude. There was always a lot of laughter and desserts to go around.

In this picture Michelle is wearing the leg warmer/boot topper things I made for all the girls in the family. I was quite proud of my mad crochet skills with those.

We had a nice dinner and played games in the evening it was a great day.

 

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Missing Something...

 

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Today at breakfast Max looked at Shane with a scrutinizing eye and said, "Dad, you look old."
I tried to stifle a laugh, while Mason explained what Max must have really meant by saying in his most nurturing only slightly patronizing voice, "He means not old like an OLD person, but old like we love you."

Ok that clears everything up. Glad to know the kids still love there old folks.