Sledding

The week leading up to Christmas was kinda nice for us...Brett called in sick on that Wednesday, and after a few hours sleep he woke up feeling great, so we kinda scored an unplanned day off. We decided to bundle kids up and go sledding. We have just two small saucer sleds, but they were perfect for the kids.

We went to Tautphus Park, where we heard there were some fun hills to sled. What we found was perfect for our kids, but totally boring for older kids. Which is probably why we had the park to ourselves!

The kids absolutely had a blast on the sleds. We each went with them a time or two, and they went by themselves a lot. It was a short trip though, because they didn't have good gloves so their hands got cold fast.

So the next day, Christmas Eve, I was at the store and found some Thinsulate mittens...perfect! I also found a new hat for Kylee, since hers have disappeared, and we decided to head to the park again. Once again, the kids had a blast. They probably sledded for about 45 minutes this time, until the little bit of snow was pretty much gone. I took a bunch of photos both times, and you can just see the joy on their faces!

Kylee tried to get on the sled herself...on her knees.

Whoops! Down she goes...


Luckily, instead of being terrified, she thought it was great!

Aedan kept pulling his hat up...it reminds me of an old man!

New Pics

Last week I finally carved out a few minutes to do pics of the kids. It reminded me of why I never do it anymore! We got a few good pics out of the 2-300 taken, so I guess we could call it a success.






This pretty much sums up that attitude of both of my children while I tried to get decent pics!

Santa Came to Town!

Last Saturday night was our family Christmas party with the McBride crew. Our good friend Santa stopped by for a quick chat with all the kids, and he even gave them a sneak peak into their Christmas presents.

Kylee and Aedan did awesome! Neither one of them was scared of the big guy at all. Kylee did good last year too, but Aedan has always been pretty nervous before. This year he kept trying to take the other kids' turns!




Kylee informed Santa that she wanted a new movie...Snow White, to be exact. I can't wait to see if Santa pulls through for her! ;-)

A Little Holiday Fun

Last night was the Christmas party for Brett's work. For those of you who don't know, he still works for the City of Rexburg. For their Christmas parties, they just give everyone wristbands for the entire family to enjoy an evening at The Rex in Rexburg.



If you've never been there, it's like a huge rec center. There are 6 theaters, a large bowling alley, an arcade/pool room, and a kids play room with one of those huge inflated jungle gyms. They have concessions, and will even deliver a pizza to you in the movies! That was kinda interesting.

As part of the deal, we got to choose from movies or bowling for free. We decided to give the movie a shot, and took the kids to see Planet 51.


It was actually a pretty cute movie, and both kids actually sat through the entire show! I'm sure that contributed to my impression of the movie.

After the movie we ended up bowling a game with the family of one of Brett's coworkers. That was the longest game we've ever sat through. It was really fun to talk to some of the people Brett works with, and their families, but man it takes forever to let a 4 year old and a 2 year old bowl!


The kids loved it though, and we decided it was a pretty great night. And, no pictures of the night, because I left my camera at my parents house on Thanksgiving and haven't gotten it back yet...withdrawals! I'm picking it up first thing today after class, so there will probably be some new family pics up soon. Merry Christmas!

Tillamook

So three months ago (on our not quite fully blogged vacation) we took part of our last day in Oregon to visit the Tillamook cheese factory. This was one of the highlights of our trip. It was an absolutely fascinating place. We learned a lot about the company, tried several different kinds of cheese, discovered we like our safe yellow flavors, and even had some fresh ice cream. Here are some of the photos we took while we were there.

This was a big attraction. Kylee loved sticking her face in the cow for a picture, and she also loved all the attention from the people waiting to do the same. This place was packed!


And of course Aedan got to be the farmer, with a little help from Dad.


Then we climbed a flight of stairs to what I imagine would be called the viewing deck, or something like that. They have huge windows up there that look down on the factory. We really had no idea what was going on most of the time, but it was fascinating to watch the cheese come out different machines, get cut, weighed, bagged, cut some more and packaged for the store. These were some HUGE chunks of cheese!!








At the end of our 'tour', we decided to treat ourselves to some fresh, Tillamook ice cream (despite the fact it was barely 10 am!). It's kinda hard to see in this pic, but look at how packed the ice cream stand was!!

When I ordered pumpkin ice cream, Brett looked at me like I'd gone mad. This is Brett, eating my pumpkin ice cream. :-) It was simply to die for, and the second I find some in the stores, it's coming home with me.

Kylee simply devoured her strawberry.

Aedan got tired of his strawberry fast...and drooled over Brett's mint chocolate chip.


All in all, this was a great stop in our weeklong trip, and I would recommend it to anyone who is on the Oregon coast.