Snow Fun!

It's the last day of January!! Hooray!  And we saw the sun today!  We got hit with a bunch of storms this week.  It snowed Sunday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon so we added another foot or more to the snow we already had.  When it stopped snowing briefly on Tuesday I made the kids go out and play in it.  It was good for all of us to get out of the house and expend some energy.  Even Spike (the cat) was happy to be outside.  I snapped a few pictures of the kids having fun in the snow.  We spent the last half hour of our time outside clearing a foot of snow off of our trampoline.  It was no easy task, but we did it, only to wake up the next morning to it covered again!  I was beginning to wonder if the snow would ever stop falling, but finally today we saw the SUN!  It has been at least a week or more since we saw it.  Hooray for February!

January...again

Is January over yet?  It has been a long and gloomy month.  It would be nice just to see the sun for a day. :)  We haven't been up to much which is why I haven't posted for awhile.  The biggest news of the month is SNOW!  The week that the kids went back to school we had a big snow storm and ended up having school cancelled on Friday the 11th.  It is the first snow day in many, many years, so it was lots of fun!  We ended up getting about 14 inches out of the storm.  Nate was out-of-town until that Friday evening so I was stuck with all the shoveling.  Luckily I went out Thursday night and did some of it, so Friday morning wasn't too bad.  We had a great time spending the day in the snow.  We made tunnels and snow-caves and walked down to our church to sled a little.  The next day we went to a favorite sledding hill, but didn't stay very long because of cold, grumpy kids.  Nate and I could have stayed and went sledding for hours! :) A strange thing occurred this week, we had freezing rain.  Our sidewalks and driveway quickly became an ice rink.  It was a crazy day with people sliding all over the place on the roads and sidewalks.  Let's hope February isn't as gloomy!! 

 My two days of shoveling done!

 Liam's tunnel.

 Gavin in the tunnel.

 A winter view of our house.

 Gavin's snow-cave.

 Liam showing how deep the snow is.

 Sledding.  You can see how happy Ashlyn was to be there.

 Gavin after a face plant into the snow

Nate on his last run down the hill.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2012

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We were able to have Nate's sister Ally with us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  The kids were so glad to have her with us.  We spent Christmas Eve day playing games, doing puzzles, decorating gingerbread houses, and eating pizza.  We went for a ride to look at Christmas lights and came home to find our Christmas pj's from the Christmas Elf.  We all stayed up way too late, luckily Santa didn't skip our house because of this.  Santa over did it again this year.  Sadly we didn't take any pictures of Christmas day.  We spent the day Skyping with my sister Aimee, Nate's two brothers on missions, and Nate's family.  The Skyping took most of our day, but it was so great to see everyone.  Technology is awesome!  Nate was preparing Prime Rib for dinner, but the temperature of the meat wasn't rising like it needed too, so we ended up eating our Christmas dinner the day after Christmas.  :) It was actually nice to have a good meal the day after and not have to worry about cooking on Christmas.

After church the day before Christmas Eve. 

Ally with her gingerbread farmhouse. 

 Liam with his gingerbread cottage.

 Liam by our HUGE tree.

 Ashlyn with her gingerbread cottage.

 Gavin with his gingerbread church.  (we didn't get a front view of it)

 Christmas Eve 

 Aunt Ally with the kiddos.

This is the one picture we got of Christmas, but it was the day after.  Gavin's big present from Santa was the Lego Superstars Destroyer.  He spent all of Christmas Day and the few hours the next day building all 3000+ pieces.  Yes, it is about 4 feet long too. I'm sure Santa thought it would be something Gavin worked on the whole Christmas break, but no, he had it done in about 15 hours.  Lego maniac.