Winter Wonderland

We got quite a lot of snow the week before Christmas.  It was very pretty!

 Scott got to come home from work a little early and went right to work shoveling.

It was a big job!  Thanks Scott!!

 The kids wanted to go help him!  Matthew ran right out there.

Anna took a loooong time to get ready.  She wanted to go out just in jammies and was quite annoyed that I made her get dressed up for the snow.  :)

 She eventually made it outside though.  Properly dressed.

 They had lots of fun playing in the snow!

 Real icicles took over our icicle lights and started pulling them down a little bit.

 Matthew and Scott get ready for a snowball fight.

 The kids loved getting tossed in the snow.

Hooray for snow days and white Christmases!

The Santa Express

We rode the Santa Express this week.  It's normally the Royal Gorge Route Railroad which goes through a very deep gorge cut by the Arkansas river.  Here are the kids trying out Santa's sleigh.

 Here's part of the train

 Matthew in his Santa jammies checks out the train.

All Aboard!

Normally the train only goes at night, but since it was all sold out at night they added some day time runs with Santa.  I really liked going during the day!

 We could see a lot more of the scenery that way!

 Grant enjoyed the ride too, but I think he wished he could crawl around on the floor for most of it.

The Arkansas River alongside us - yes, this river really goes all the way to Arkansas and finally the Mississippi River.  The river was very icy, iced all the way across in some places.  Brrr!

 Here's Matthew enjoying some hot cocoa and cookies.

And we saw Santa at the North Pole.

I hope we didn't ruin the magic of the North Pole by seeing it in the daylight.  :) There was a lot more cactus there than I imagined. 

 The kids thought the little village was neat!

Santa got on board and visited with all the kids.

Anna couldn't think of what she wanted while she was talking to Santa, but she did write him a nice note which only she could decipher. 

Matthew told Santa he wanted a jet transformer.  Matthew also brought a candy cane from home to give Santa.  It was all broken when he finally got to give it to Santa.  It was cute though.

Of course, my photo op with Santa turned out blurry.  :)

Santa gave all the kids a little bell ornament.  Even Grant got to visit with Santa and get an ornament.

 

Santa's village/the north pole again.  :)

 It started snowing while we were out there.  Very exciting!

 

And far above our heads we could see the Royal Gorge Bridge.  We saw this train track and the river from the bridge when we visited the bridge and walked across it during the summer.  The bridge and the bottom of the canyon are FAR AWAY from each other.  It's a deep deep gorge.  Here are some pictures from the top of the gorge.

There was hardly anyone on the train so on the way back we were allowed to go sit in the dome car.  Fancy!

Santa's elves read stories to the kids and they all sang songs.  The kids had a great time!

A Visit from Sinterklaas

On December 5th it's a Dutch tradition to leave your shoes out (possibly wooden shoes) for Sinterklaas to leave a present in.  We made a little Dutch soup for dinner and left our shoes out before going to bed.  It happened to be very cold that night and I was worried about any Sinterklaas treats freezing, but somehow they turned out ok.  We are not Dutch by the way.  :)  Here is Anna retrieving her cold shoes.  All those cords are for our Christmas lights which Matthew and Scott have valiantly been perfecting over the past few days.

 Matthew was excited about his shoes.

Grant didn't leave his shoes out, but he didn't seem to mind too much.  He found a jingle bell necklace to placate him while the kids examined they're goodies.

Christmas Creche Exhibit

Our church (our stake) puts on a Christmas Creche exhibit every year and we went this year to check it out.  There were so many beautiful nativity scenes on display, beautiful Christmas music being performed while you peruse the scenes and also an outdoor live nativity with real animals.  They also had a kids room with a bunch of nativity scenes you can touch, activities for the kids and dress up clothes for the kids to try on.  Here is Matthew dressed up as Joseph.

 Here we are in the kids room looking at some non-breakable nativity scenes.

We went outside to watch the live nativity scene performance.

It was cold out there but they had hot cocoa so that helped a little.

 The kids sat in the aisle so they could see better.  They had to move once when the three wise men (and a llama) came up the center aisle to see the baby Jesus.  The performance was very nice.

The kids wanted to see the nativity scenes again afterward.  They had a little scavenger hunt page for the kids to cross off different nativity scenes.  One we were supposed to find was a Kokeshi Doll nativity scene!  We were excited to find that one.  There was also a lego one, ones from all different parts of the world and of all different sizes.  It was really cool to see them all and I'm glad we got a chance to go.

The Tree

Since we are living back in the states this year and not in temporary lodging, we could get a real tree this year.  We ended up getting a "Noble Fir" (I was strongly rebuked for calling it the wrong kind of fir tree by my Oregonian husband!!) that was shipped in from Oregon.  The trees were all wrapped up when we bought it so we had to pick it out making our best guess.  When we got it home we took it inside before opening it and shaking it out so it dropped a lot of needles while it unfurled.  Here it is part way open after we removed the twine.  Eventually it opened up all the way (after drinking a lot of water) and we were ready to decorate.  Scott picked a very nice tree without even being able to see it opened up.  Amazing.  Are these the things you learn in elementary school in Oregon?

When we unboxed all our Christmas ornaments we found that they had really taken a beating.  A lot of stuff was broken or crushed.  It's as if our Christmas ornaments went to Japan and back...via boat...stacked under boxes of heavy furniture. :)  Most of our Christmas lights were non-functional.   We tried and tried to resuscitate them, but to no avail.  Sadly our Christmas tree decorating had to be put off until we went and bought new lights.  We decorated this little tree in the mean time.   This was one we had in our hotel room last year while we were moving.

Finally we got some lights and were ready to make another go at the tree.  Grant was eager to help...or at least investigate all the decorations.

Matthew and Anna were big helpers with all the ornaments.  Scott had to lift them up to help them place things just where they wanted.

A lot of the ornaments ended up on the lower end of the tree.  Scott had to reposition a lot of them to keep them out of Grant's reach.

 

And somehow we got the tree decorated.  Grant wasn't feeling too happy by the end of it all. A lot of our ornaments and decorations were broken (one of our Christmas boxes got very crushed in the move) so we bought a few new ones and some new lights and VOILA!!  It looks like Christmas in our house.  I think Scott is glad to have a real Christmas tree in our house for the first time in five years.  And an Oregon tree at that! 

And as an aside, here is our family Christmas tree history: 

2005 - (our first Christmas together) we had a real tree in Florida

 

2006 - we had a real tree in Monterey

2007 - we were moving (no tree, but here we are getting a tree with the family in Oregon)

2008 - Okinawa (tiny fake tree from 100 Yen store)

2009 - Okinawa (tiny fake 100 Yen tree)

2010 - moving, living in temp lodging in Colorado (tiny fake tree from Target - 100 Yen tree was in transit)

2011 - real tree in Colorado (see above)!!  Hooray!!