So Long, 2016

Let's start with the reason for the season. The kids were in the Christmas pageant at church. Hadley reprised her role as an angel for the 3rd year in a row (just above Mary below). They had to memorize a lot of songs this year, and my favorite Hadley-ism besides "Hall-ay-moon-ya" was "In his cell sees day-o!".

Owen was a sheep this year. A demotion from Joseph and wise man from years past if you ask me, but he was totally happy and into his "baa"-ing on all fours. It was a very cute way to celebrate Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning came with new snowfall that continued all day! I was expecting to awake to a ruckus in the early hours, but we got out of bed to a quiet house at 7:20. After some kitchen noises, the kids came out a bit later.

They hadn't even noticed stockings yet! So, we did those while breakfast went in the oven. Then we had some yummy cinnamon rolls and bacon before continuing the excitement. This was my kind of holiday!

It was nice to scale back Christmas a bit this year. We did the 4 things rule: something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read. Extended family and Santa added the cherries on top. 

We spent much of the week after O's birthday building Legos, and that didn't change at Christmas, except now H got to build some too.

After gifts, it was time to think about the turkey dinner. I think we got about 10 inches of fresh snow on top of the other snow we had from a week earlier. This is probably the most snow we've had since we've lived here (nearly 6 years!). First item on the agenda was to shovel out a spot for the smoker.

Once the turkey was going, we could start to dig our way out on the driveway,

our neighbors' driveway, 

and the porch.

 After all that work, the kids were eager to break in the new snow with their new sled!

Finally, smoked turkey time! Owen requested a leg and channeled his inner T-Rex. Yum!

With two weeks off of school, and snow everywhere, there has been much sledding, fort building, and cross-country skiing going on!

The parents had to help make a little snow fort in our front yard. With our powdery snow, it requires a lot of power and time packing snow in the block-maker. And an overnight freezing doesn't hurt either. I like this pic because the kids are running along the plowed snow wall (by the street) in the background, playing cops and robbers.

The mound from our driveway and the road plowing makes a nice slide for the kids. More snow and extreme sub-freezing temps are in the forecast, so we have to enjoy it now!

Happy holidays from Idaho and a Merry 2017 to you!

Snowy Days Are Here Again

We've gotten about a foot of snow in the last week from a record-breaking storm, and the temperatures have been cold enough to keep it around. (The first few snow days were all followed up by rain days, which melted all of the accumulated snow pretty quickly.) But the last day of school was the biggest snow day of all! It's made for pretty, snow-covered trees, but the roads have been a mess until just recently because it's been too cold for even the road salt to work.

Anyhow, the kids had fun trying to find the curb after helping shovel the sidewalk,

And making fresh tracks across the pristine yard. Can you tell that Owen still enjoys falling and rolling around in the snow?

When it's 10 degrees F outside, sometimes I supervise through the window!

It's been so cold that even the cat, Tibbs, has been requesting fires in the fireplace. She shows up whenever someone is on the floor by the fireplace in hopes that it will be turned on. What a pampered, lazy creature!

The kids have been sledding nearly every day. We've joined them a few times, but it's nice that they can go a few houses down to a hill all by themselves now, too! We've tried just about every combination of family members on our one sled. I think Santa may be bringing us a new one this year!

Sometimes we don't even need a sled to have fun! The snow is just too dry to really make any snowballs or snowmen without adding water and strategy though. That leaves just some good, old-fashioned family snow wrestling... 

We acquired some cross-country skis (or country skis as Hadley calls them) this year, since Owen enjoyed doing that last year. We've already gotten out a couple of times, and it's been very enjoyable!

Owen brought a friend one time, and after doing the loop around the park, they did some climbing on the park fountain. I was a little nervous, since they were wearing their ski boots, but they had no issues at all and were like little mountain goats up there.

Hadley has some little ones that strap on to her snow boots too, so we could go as a family. It's so nice that we can do this in the city parks, just a short drive from home!

In other news, we continued the annual tradition of seeing a local production of the Nutcracker. This time Hadley joined us! She's been a twirling snowflake at home ever since, although she was dozing through most of Act II. It was especially fun since the kids have been studying the Waltz of the Flowers in their music class. They did their puppet show along with the music during the ballet. So cute!

Hadley performed in her school program one evening. Unfortunately, she was in the back row, so I didn't get a good picture, but we did squeeze another year out of her Santa-esque dress. Between the school and church programs, she's picked up a lot of new songs, most notable is the one in which she cheerfully sings, "Halle-moon-ya!" (She's also been enjoying practicing her lowercase letters over the break.)

One morning, we took in the Christmas exhibit at the museum. The kids had a blast dressing up in pioneer gear in the children's area. Fingers crossed in that we haven't seen any lice yet from the coonskin cap that he wore for half an hour!

Finally, I'll leave you with handsome Owen in his new birthday sweater. Happy holidays!

Lucky 7

Hard to believe the little man turned 7, but he did! Sadly, it was a school day, so I tried to temper his anticipation by letting him pick out one present to open before school. Of course, he picked the biggest one! It was the only thing he'd asked for specifically, and it made his morning. :)

Fast forward to after school: there were some more presents opened, but he was distracted by Legos and halted because Hadley was actually napping for once, and we didn't want her to miss too much of the fun. His dinner request was for California rolls. He ate a full order and some of my rolls, too.

We headed back home for dessert. He had requested an ice cream cake, despite the chilly temps outside. No problemo. Ordered that from DQ, and they even had a stormtrooper design available. Perfect!

I did not anticipate the black icing though... 

After cake, we finished opening presents and called it a day. Luckily, the next day was the last day before break and a pajama party, so the new PJs were worn immediately and all the next day.

To mark the occasion with friends, his party was on the first day of break. Amazingly, all of the invitees braved negative temps and icy roads to drive across town to the Nerf gun arena. Kinda silly to pay for this, but I think they had fun playing different variations of capture the flag and team vs. team. Owen's in green with the giant orange gun!

For the non-Nerf inclined they had some bouncy houses, trampolines, and a video game projected on the floor to pass the time. Fun was had by all!

The grand finale was pizza and cupcakes. The kids seemed to have worked up an appetite for food and silliness. All in all, a good way to celebrate a new year!