winter

Pictures do NOT do justice.

Raw and unedited, the snow was twinkling, the air was crisp, the scenes took your breath away.

 

The other side of this is: cruddy, icy, no fun roads.

Road Trip!

I love taking road trips as a family. Most of the time the kids do really well.  We have always limited the amount of time they can watch movies, which makes our job as parents on a road trip with kids less easy, but really the kids do well entertaining themselves.

 All smiles

The leader of the pack, often sets the tone:

Once in awhile someone will fall asleep. Not that common in our van, too much to see and fun to be had, but he was out this day.

And just to keep it real and let you know that it's not all sunshine and roses:

there is the occasional back and forth argument.

Having a bit of fun

This Emma has mostly just hid each night in a new spot. But she has certainly had quite a bit of fun along the way as well.

 She hid on the doorbell chimes after defacing pictures.

 CJ, was not amused.

 One morning we found that she had turned the milk green!

 Various closets.

 And one morning we found her taking a drive in Barbie's car.

Emma has brought a magical element to our Advent season this year.  The excitement the kids show each morning to find her is contagious.

The annual. . ..

Children's program.

 This year we had 2 angels and a knight in shining armor. There was much begging for Doodle to play Jesus, but we decided to not have him do that.

 Sweetness had a duet and a speaking line, she did great.
CJ had a solo and a duet, often lead the choir on other songs and several speaking parts.

Little man worked on a Superman puzzle book when he wasn't hunting for bad guys as the knight.  The knight was not his original character, the sheep costume was too hot and itchy for him and once he saw the helmet, nothing else would do.  Maybe he heard about King Herod and decided to take matters into his own hands.  Eric stepped into a part for someone who couldn't make it. He was a bumbling rookie cop the night that Jesus was born.  I didn't get any pictures of him, but he played his role to its fullest potential.  I did my best to cue kids to their places, nursed Doodle, and kept Little man from disrupting too much.

Another program down, 12 months til the next one.

What do you see?

When we headed to Flagstaff for the magical train ride, we went a day early so we could check out the Lowell Observatory. It has a reciprocal membership with our local wildlife museum to which we are members to.

 This is what Eric had been looking forward to.  This spot was specifically sought out as one of the best places to search for Pluto, and anything else they could find in space.  We saw telescopes ranging in size from small to huge.  Saw pictures of various things in space which were awesome.

And we all enjoyed looking at Jupiter and four of it's 63 moons!  We could even see the bands on Jupiter. AMAZING!

It was dark, and cold when we went Saturday night. Before leaving the hotel, we suggested and highly encouraged Sweetness to put pants on.  She had her mind made up though.

 Inside they had a cool 3-D exhibit about Mars.

 Can I touch it?

Doodle was snug as a bug, which meant he dozed while we walked around.

Saturday night we spent about two hours at the observatory. Some of it being inside and some outside, we did a lot of back and forth.  We went to a presentation about the star of Christmas as well.

Then, Sunday we headed back to do the outside day stuff.  First we walked the solar system They had a scale representation of our solar system and interesting facts about each planet along the way. 

Following the solar system was a hike thru the galaxy. The milky way galaxy.   The supernovas were much more spread out than the planets!

Saturday Doodle got to ride with Daddy, and he slept again all snuggled up.

Once through the galaxy, we got to continue on through the universe. However, the scale had to be adjust again, and this time, one inch represented 2.1 BILLION light years.  We managed to walk quite a ways that day!

Fun fact : The universe is expanding faster now, than it ever has in the past. 

It was all a bit mind boggling.

Coming back during the day we still got to look through telescopes, we just saw different things.

Like, the sun. We saw solar flairs and temperature variations on the surface of the sun. Fascinating!

Did you have a good time?

Yes was the answer we got.

Every day moments

 Little brothers are great to read to.

 Big brothers know to stop and show the pictures on each page.

 He has started to smile.

 It only took about 20 pictures to get a couple that worked.

 I was making smoothies, but put in too many frozen fruit pieces. So instead they got fruit "ice cream" for supper, and I sprinkled a few chocolate chips on top.  Points for the "coolest" mom.

 Today, for the first time in 7 weeks, I walked the girls, (all the kids) to school.  Doodle did great, sleeping most of the way. My incision felt pretty good and the fresh crisp air told us winter is here.  I did insist on one more hug from each of the girls after the bell rang.

Choo choo . . .chugga chugga

I will make this as quick as I can.  Doodle seems to be in a growth spurt which requires only mommy to hold him all day long, preferably -in his opinion- nursing all day as well.  We are thankful for growing babies.

Okay, maybe I'm a little sad that he seems to be growing so quickly, but I am thankful that he is healthy and growing.

It just means that as I type this, there is a fussy baby in the background and I am wondering if it will take two days to finish this "quick post".

 We were able to get tickets to the BNSF Holiday Express train ride for military families.  If you talk to the kids, they will tell you we rode the real Polar Express!  Emma showed up in our hotel room with the tickets!  Talk about starting off the day in a magical way for the kids!

 All the excitement!

 We boarded the train about an hour before it left the station, so a couple of very excited phone calls were made to the grandparents to tell them where we were.

 Maybe Eric wasn't quite as excited as the kids. If you had seen his face going to the observatory the night before, you would realize that it was possible that all his excitement had been used up already.

 Doodle slept for part of the train ride. He also ate and flirted with the lady behind us.

Treats started with hot chocolate.

 Santa came and handed out ornaments and sang jingle bells with us

 A first for us, a picture with Santa and no one crying! We stopped trying to see Santa a few years ago due to all the tears and drama it created.  This year, it was all smiles !

 Unlike riding in a plane or a car, in a train we were able to get up and walk around. The back half our our train car had these huge windows to watch the scenery go by.

 There was a car with dome top windows.

 A train was passing us and Little Man couldn't figure out which way to watch.

In our car there was a balcony area with seats. Sweetness just lounging upstairs.

 As it got dark the lights shined. Each car was decorated uniquely for Christmas.

A fabulous time was had by all.  THANK YOU to BNSF railroad for allowing us this opportunity.