December 19-21

Day 19 - Christmas camping by the tree Family Pie Night. I planned to camp by the tree after our annual Family Pie Night, but with all of the sugar and commotion, it wasn't a good idea. Plus, my mom and Mike's mom hung around for a little while and chatted after everyone else left early. I'm pushing Christmas camping off until this weekend...AFTER Christmas.

(This is me with my crazy cousins. I'm on my tip toes, by the way. I look 6 feet tall behind them and I'm not!)

Day 20 - Bake for neighbors. The kids had fun helping prepare and deliver the first half of our cookie boxes to friends in our neighborhood last night. (Don't worry neighbors...I'm OCD about clean hands in the kitchen!)

We spent time looking at Christmas lights in between deliveries.

Day 21 - SNOW DAY in Flagstaff!!! Today went really well, which surprised me for some reason. Over two hours of driving in each direction and we didn't have to make a single stop to go potty or calm the baby. Jason was such an angel...he was in his car seat the whole day from 9am to 7pm, except feedings and changing his diaper and a few times I pulled him out to hold him and let him stretch. The only two times he fussed all day was when his diaper was dirty...he was truly the model travel baby.

Kaylin had a blast in the snow until her shoes soaked through and her wet socks froze to her feet. (we don't spend money on snow boots in Arizona) Ryan had several meltdowns...turns out snow is both horribly cold AND disgustingly wet. It's not as fun as it looks on t.v. His mittens got too damp too quickly and cold hands meant a grumpy boy. This little montage was his first experience sledding by himself...click on it to see the progression of his facial expressions from cautious to worried to scared to furious. (I thought it would upload much bigger, but it didn't.)

He finally agreed to go down the hill with Mike, but they caught air going over a few bumps which freaked them both out a bit.

Notice Ryan's arm over his eyes, below...

Ryan's favorite part of the day was making snow angels and having snowball fights.



I put this together to print off for my scrapbook page of our day. You may need to click on it to see the text and my facial expressions. I don't even remember raising my arms in the air like I was on a roller coaster OR grabbing onto Kaylin to keep her in the sled as we picked up speed and I couldn't slow us down.

After sledding, we went to dinner at Oregano's, where they give the kids pizza dough to play with to keep them occupied. How cool is that???