Chair Lift = No Problem

Yesterday we hit the slopes again, and Ben rode the chair lift for the first time! He did great, no problems. He then snowplowed down some long greens with us and did awesome! Here are a couple of snowy pictures Andrew took with his phone. Max: Me and Ben:
Again, as you can see, not a sunny day, but we had steady flakes all day long, which makes for some pretty amazing snow on the slopes!

Getting Our Holiday On

Tuesday, I made 4 dozen of these little gems. I'm sure I'll be making more next week, but this is a start! :)

Tuesday evening we met up with some friends to tour the lights at the Wildlife Experience. Max felt the need to look frightened in front of the polar bear and dive like a dolphin, but I managed to snap this one before he crooked his arm over his head like a candy cane. The kids wrote letters to Santa, mailed them, and visited Santa's reindeer. They also had Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas running every 45 minutes on the IMAX, so we watched that on the BIG screen.

Today we toured Hammond's Candy Factory with my mom. System overload. Watching the workers do their thing.

Then we grabbed lunch and headed to the Governor's Mansion. The real attraction for the kids was in the Carriage House: Legos! Lego village with running trains. (Max is tooting the train horn.) Totally amazing Lego renderings of local landmarks, such as the Governor's Mansion and the Denver Public Library. Great holiday activities!

December, so far

Well, we're closing in on Christmas. Max is off-track from Thanksgiving break through the end of winter break. I've heard some parents say that they wouldn't want their kids home at this time because they'd be bouncing off the walls before Christmas, but I actually kind of like it. Whereas others talk about how frenzied everything is right now as they rush around, I feel kind of zen. Since we're in vacation mode (Ben still has preschool 3 mornings per week, but it's a lot more vacation-y than normal), we can do a lot of the fun holiday activities during the weekdays when things aren't as busy.

So what have we been up to? We've spent a lot of time with friends, gone to the Wildlife experience, gone skiing, and the boys checked out the Christmas activities (reindeer, crafts, puppet show) in Elizabeth with Grandma and Grandpa.

Ben had his school's holiday program Monday morning. Here is what the cuties looked like.

And here is what the cuties sounded like.

(He's got some great jazz hands, but looks a little Allen Iversen, in need of some chap-stick.)

One thing I love about his preschool is that they do Christmas songs, Hanukkah songs and Kwanzaa songs (bet you didn't know such a thing existed, huh?). I think it's good to understand the holidays your own family celebrates, but to also be aware of the holidays other families celebrate. It's hard to believe this is our last year at the preschool. It's our fourth year in a row having kids attend there and it's bittersweet as we enter the last half of our youngest child's final year there.

Later this week we're heading to the Hammond's Candy Factory and the Governor's Mansion, both done up especially fancy for the holidays. Saturday we're going skiing again and I have a cookie exchange/party with friends.

Last weekend skiing, (and we didn't take any pictures because it was snowing off and on all day, so we didn't have the bright blue Chamber of Commerce sky, but we had lots of fresh powder instead) Ben totally got into it for the first time, which was awesome!!! I so look forward to getting up there this season with the whole family. Last weekend and this weekend, we got discounted tickets through Boy Scouts, and then we also bought 4-packs to Copper Mtn, so we'll get up at least 6 times this year, which is progress for us. :)

Also on last Saturday's ski day, one of my very favorite Max stories happened. He was still groggy from getting woken up early to go skiing, but mumbled, "Mama, I have a surprise for you." He then proceeded to unzip his footy pajamas, only to reveal that he was FULLY DRESSED underneath! He said, "I was just so excited to go skiing that I didn't want to waste any time getting dressed." He was like a skiing superhero! What a cutie!

Today, we have nothing on the calendar (back to the whole vacation mode thing), but we're going to make some of my always-in-demand tagalong cookies (holla to Laurinda for that recipe!) and another batch of a new-to-me-recipe mint chocolate cookies. I made a batch yesterday and I highly recommend them if you like mint and chocolate! I'm pretty sure the boys will do some jigsaw puzzle work too...they've become pretty dang good at puzzles and will work on those puppies for hours!

Reluctant Cuddlers

Well, they're getting better at spooning since someone decided it was a good idea to shred his dog bed.

Thank you!

Thanks to your generous support of the Scouts fundraiser, Max got to throw a whipped cream pie at the Scoutmaster. What fun! You should've seen and heard the boys giggling and giggling and giggling some more as about twenty boys got to do this.

And the Baby Turns Five

Ben's party was this morning, which wrapped up birthday week around here. Since he went with Lightning McQueen for the second year in a row, many of his pictures look the same as last year, just the kids are a year older. It's amazing though how much difference one year makes. This year some of the kids are in kindergarten and the others are in pre-K. They were so much better at playing party games, taking turns, etc. One of the boys said "I love games - let's play some more!"

Birthday boy. Playing a little "Pin the Hook on Mater."
The ever popular "Lizard/snake in the boot."
Pinata! Loot! Coloring while waiting for pizza and cake. Cake! Ben wanted Lightning's eyes.
The party went really well and I think all of the boys had a lot of fun.

Scooby Dooby Doo

Here are some pictures from a certain boy's seven-year-old birthday party last night. The cake Mom and I made.
It's sure handy to have a mom that went to bakery school. :)

When we went to open presents, we found that a villain had stolen them (oh no!!) and the kids had to follow clues to find the presents before the villain took off with them. You can see that this involved a lot of kids running around - very quickly. Now where is that clue???




All the meddling kids.
Then onto pizza and cake.




The pinata.
And then settling onto the couch to watch some "Aloha Scooby Doo."

All in all, a success!