Sledding videos

Here are a few videos from sledding. One of them is Matt's sister and the other is, of course, Jackson.

Sledding

Since we have had quite a bit of snow - we went sledding Christmas day. It was a lot of fun. The kids loved it. Maggie would carry the sled back up all by herself and just go down again. If we asked to join her she would say "No, I am just going to go by myself." Jackson found a jump and went over it again and again. Hailey gets bundled into her little sled to keep her off the snow and warm. she would grin a little about sledding too. It all brings back a lot of memories of all the sledding I did at home with my siblings. We were pretty crazy. I'm not sure how we all came out of it in one piece.

Cool stuff

In Family Fun I saw a recipe for making these cool drinks. You can layer different drinks on top of each other and they stay seperated. We also did red/white/blue for 4th of July. All you have to do is find drinks that have different sugar content. The one with the most sugar goes in first and so on. Usually it's juice, then pop, then gatorade or something with really low sugar content. Sometimes it makes for interesting flavors depending on what you use. This one is cran/apple juice, then 7up, then koolaid lemonade (tinted green) I didn't plan ahead enough to get green gatorade. Anyway, make sure you have ice in your cup and pour slowly so you don't mix it when you pour it in.

Christmas

It's always fun to watch the kids opening presents. They always want to play with whatever one they open - they don't even care about the rest. It was a good, quiet Christmas at home. It was nice to not be traveling through any mountain passes or busy airports. It was sad to not be with more family though. I look forward to the upcoming family reunions so we can travel when the weather is better.

Let it snow!

We have gotten quite a bit of snow over the past few days - about 8 inches I think. The kids are lovin' it. Even Hailey gets out in it but I'm not sure I would say she is lovin' it. She tolerates it - for a little while. She like her little sled as long as it is moving.

Holiday lights

Williard Bay - a campground near here - puts up a light display each year. You drive around the campground to see all the lights. The kids really enjoy it because we let them get out of their buckles and stick their heads out the window. There are also some funny displays.....

In this one they crash into the tree and get all hung up in the branches.....

This one says - Reindeer Flight School - as you can see he hasn't quite gotten the hang of it.

The kids love to look around and see if they can figure out the different groupings - which generally means 4-5 trips around the loop (much to Matt's dismay). They also had a couple of real reindeer that we got out to see but I didn't take any pictures of those. I should take a picture of the lights on our house..... although they are pretty sparse.

Mouse House

I was cleaning up the other day and the mouse ears from the dress-up box happened to be out so I put them on Hailey. Maggie thought that was great so she wanted to be a mouse too. Maggie also had her "princess" shirt from the dress up box.

Snowman

We finally got some more snow! Jackson headed right out and started on a snowman. He made this one all by himself - from start to finish! It's amazing how capable and independent he is getting! My little boy is growing up :)

Christmas is coming!

Maggie was grocery shopping with me and spotted this hat. She was very excited about it. They loved pretending to be santa claus. One of these days I will have to post a picture of our tree. It's pretty sparsely decorated. We started getting ornaments for the kids each year - and that it about all the ornaments we have so that makes ..... 8, I think :)

Wow, Hailey!

Sheesh - look what our baby is up to! I can't believe how fast she is growing. It seems like just yesterday that I was pregnant. I still can't believe how much better I feel NOT being pregnant! Life is pretty good right now :)

She can't sit up for very long and is pretty wobbly but she obviously loves to see things a little better. What a happy girl!

Rocket motor test fire

We went to another test fire at Matt's work today. We had a nice parking spot so we just opened up the back of the car and had lunch while we watched. It made the car vibrate as it burned. It's really a pretty cool thing to see. I'm sure an actual shuttle launch is much cooler but for now .... this is as good as it gets. The kids enjoyed it. Jackson kept asking when it was going to take off and Maggie kept saying she didn't like the car wiggling.

New Car

Well - here is our new car. It's a 2005 Honda Pilot. It has a 3rd row seat so it can fit 8 people. I have decided that there is just no easy way to use a 3rd row - but it's very nice to have the extra room. Now we just have to figure out a good car seat arrangement....... At first the kids had a hard time adjusting to the idea of a new car - I don't think we warned them very well. Jackson cried for awhile over the idea of losing the blue saturn but now he has decided that we should keep the bigger one. Especially since we are going to start taking one of his friends to preschool with us - a girlfriend apparently - "Mom, Brooklyn just said she's in love with me." I asked "what does that mean?". He said "it just means she likes me". I said "How do you feel about that?" He said "It's ok". Ah, young love.