When we were little, my mom always took a picture with each of us and all of our Christmas gifts in front of the Christmas tree. When we got back from Oregon, I set up the boys’ presents in front of our tree and took their pictures. I wasn’t going to post them, but I just loved their cheesy smiles :) (and Nate proudly showing off his Christmas Break beard, which was part of some other MBA student’s brilliant beard-a-thon idea)
A couple days after Christmas, we drove out to Oregon to spend New Year’s with my family. The day before we made the drive, it snowed nonstop all day – probably a foot at Nate’s parents’ house – so we were pretty worried about the drive. The usual 12 hours turned into 15 because of the snow, but we made there safely. The lowlight was Ryan spending 1.5-2 hours of the drive screaming “daddy! un-buckle me NOW!”
We had a lot of fun while we were there. Some of the fun things we did:
Family Christmas Gift Exchange
(the kids all lined up in the family room before they could go in, just like we used to do on Christmas morning)
Bowling
Bennett loved that the bowling balls his size were orange
Trip to ScienceWorks Museum
one of my favorite moments at the museum: we were in the bubble room and Ryan took the big bubble wand (it’s about a foot diameter) and put it over his head, around his neck. It was pretty funny – and resulted in the bubbles in his hair
New Year’s Eve Pinata
New Year’s Eve Dance Party in the dark with Glow Sticks
New Year’s Eve Party Hats and Tiaras, and Minute to Win It Games
A Few Misc. Ones
Ryan & James in their matching PJs, building a marble track, and nightly story time (I’m pretty sure every adult took a turn being the book-reader)
Trip to Grandma’s Preschool, and All Dressed Up for Church
Lunch at Red Robin, Ryan playing Kitchen, and surprise pedicures sponsored by our wonderful husbands
And Finally – Lining up to make teams (oldest to youngest) and Lining up the balls for Dodgeball
That was a lot of pictures! We had a great trip. Fortunately, the drive back to Utah was much less eventful than the drive there and we made it back without incident – or snow.
