marshmallow wars and the park

rayna announced about a week before Christmas that she wanted a marshmallow gun. i'm not sure where she learned about this kind of thing, but i think she was thinking it was more of a marshmallow dispenser... (i think the idea came from an oriental trading company catalog). needless to say, paul and i thought that was a fabulous idea and we went out and got the pvc pieces to make guns for 4 people (not all in the same location for Christmas, but still, it's always a good idea, right?). rayna's was for her, but to share with afton and malachi, but uncle matthew's was just for him, and aunt sarah's was for defense! the day after Christmas we went out to a local park and had a lot of fun!



ready...

aim...



fire!

we were having a lot of fun at the park, and i was playing with my new camera, so there's a ton of pictures from the park... here's some of my favorites:

malachi LOVES climbing and sliding



rayna jumped off the jeep



lots of swinging...



awww, how cute ;)



i loved the light in this one, uncle matt took a bunch of cool shots of rayna and chi on this little climber




grandma and grandpa came too... but they didn't swing or slide at all, can you believe it?! ;)



malachi was hanging from the monkey bars... he's getting stronger!

running update

inturrupting the Christmas vacation report for my personal running record...
the timing chips weren't working today for my latest 5K, so i'm going with my friend's stopwatch, which said i ran in 30 minutes, 53 seconds... i'll take it, even though i felt suspiciously weak by the end ;)
for previous runs, remember here.

Christmas

so i think my new favorite thing about Christmas is having it on Sunday :) can we do that more often please?
Afton is far and away the most excited about Christmas this year for our family, and was up correspondingly early, so she's the only one i got a picture of eating breakfast (then we were in a hurry to open as much as possible of the stockings and get off to 8.30am church)



she could be in a commercial here, huh?!

naturally i got practically no pictures of the stockings and the cute little things they were able to open before church... i took a lot, but apparently i was too excited to focus on things that might blog-worthy... after church, we rushed home to talk to auntie emalie (on a mission in florida), and it turns out she ended up rescheduling anyways, so we ended up talking to her about an hour and a half later than we thought we had to rush to do... which was fine for the grown-ups, but mom made the kids wait even longer to get to the good stuff! we finished opening stockings while brunch was in the oven, then we ate some yummy breakfast casserole and coffee cake (cake for breakfast! this really is a holiday!) and then talked to emalie for real before finally getting to the presents!
though now that i think about it, i did let the girls each 'open' one present (that we didn't wrap) before brunch, they each got a sleeping bag, which they were very excited about, now we're all ready to go camping again! here are some random pictures i did take of Christmas gifts/children:


rayna's new teddy bear, that matches her bear hat

malachi got LOTS of new trucks and cars, which he loves! he really wasn't interested in that other red present at all (it was a new tool set, he likes it fine too, but not as much as those tractors!)



the kids each got a ring-pop in their stockings that they could eat while we were walking home form church... they were happy to pose for pictures with them, but they weren't interested in looking at me too much :)



afton posing with her dress--i still love these dresses!
here's hoping they fit for a LONG time!



the girls got daddy a hammock for Christmas, the even wrapped it for him, and may have helped unwrap it too ;)

and finally, here was grandma's tree... maybe i should have put that one first ;)

Christmas Eve

so it got to be Christmas eve, and naturally that means the kids are dressing up to act out the nativity while dad reads... we may not be with my dad, but my kids' dad can read too ;)... so as we finished dinner we hurried to find costumes, and i think the results were fabulous!

Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus and the manger



the angel



the adorable shepherds



the narrator



the whole crew :)
ps, those are sarah's sheep

we love the Christmas story.... my kids act it out throughout the year, but never with as much fervor and support as on Christmas Eve!

travel...

first, a tiny bit of background... my mom gave me a camera for Christmas... so i took about a million pictures of our trip out to AZ... and i loved it... so now i'm really trying to pare down the number of pictures i post here (though it may not seem like it).



yep... i even have to show the pic of the camera...

where to begin... we planned on driving about 18 hours from paul's work straight through to AZ thurs afternoon, and i even made a paper chain for the kids with places and activities for them to look forward to (and not to ask 'are we there yet') along the way. we always drive through the night if possibel because when the children are asleep they are happy and no one usually has to stop for the bathroom (roughly every half hour when they are awake...). everything was going fine til we got to new mexico. land of enchantment. or so they say... we were routed off the highway around 3 am and told no one was going anywhere so we might as well get comfortable (HA). there were literally hundreds and perhaps thousands of other vehicles routed off where were, we certainly couldn't see any end in sight, and we found a place to stop for the night. fortunately that meant that the kids could get out of their car seats, and they slept the better for it. paul turned the car on every hour or so to turn the heat back on, because it was rather cold (we almost gave the kids their Christmas presents--sleeping bags--early, but decided they were warm enough with their blankets, especially as they barely woke enough to get unbuckled). it was a long night. by 8.30am, we decided to try our luck elsewhere. we knew another highway that runs roughly parallel to the one we were on, and went southwest to it, then we went back northwest to re-connect to the one we were on originally, but about 30 miles further down, because ALL the highways in NM were closed for the duration of the snow. folks, it was 2 days before Christmas, and the huge snowfall seemed to be about 2-3 inches. i'm sure there were places that were more, but it really wasn't that bad. the snowplows were clearly running all night long, and i think if they'd let the cars continue to pass it would have been fine, but it was obviously not my call. so this was our view for the next 2 hours:

 as we sat and waited for the road to open (this was after lunch). in the 2 hours we sat there, dozens of cars were sent back, and eventually they circled around and came and parked on the road (when there were too many for the police to send them back). if you can see the black cruiser facing us just past that black car, it was the policeman, we were that close to the barricade. we made some friends, and paul took the kids on a short walk, but since we were planning for Christmas in AZ we didn't have any real winter gear, so they mostly stayed in the car too. (ps, even more frustrating, we could even see some cars occasionally that they were letting drive OUT of the other side of the highway, so it was clearly passable)


note, afton needed my sweatshirt. that's how unprepared we were for snow.

the kids were AMAZING!!! they were mostly playing and being happy, despite being cooped up in the car for so long (there weren't any places to stay in the little town we were stuck in) and i was proud of them!

hooray for toys (and books)



even malachi was happy as long as we didn't try to buckle him!

eventually a lady came running towards her car calling to her friends/family "they're letting us through" and there was a mass ruch to the cars, paul had ours on and inching into traffic as i was frantically helping the very agreeable and helpful kids into their carseats! i don't think anyone will ever know for sure if the lady was just ensuring that they make it to their Christmas, or if they really were letting us through, but there were plenty more people than police, so either way, it worked...

our view as we finally continued to drive. the roads don't look very scary to me!

and a view out my passanger side window, the sides of the road don't look too bad either!

long story short (too late)... we made it to grandma w's house almost exactly 12 hours later than we planned! but we made it, and we slept really well that night :)

final catch-up before the vacation report

warning, this next few weeks might get boring, i took that many pictures! but first, the last part of december before our stellar arizona vacation!


afton's been SOOO excited about santa this year. she was first in line to see him at the church Christmas party! she told him she wanted snow, a necklace, and a happy family (she got all three!)

 

rayna and i got to go to afton's school Christmas presentation. this is in the classroom after the show, with one of the girls' good friends, tally. they got to play with the costumes a bit and we had milk and cookies to celebrate.

the class getting ready to perform, rockin' rudolf, the little boy in the front is jesse, another of afton's good friends.
i took some pics of the actual performance, and a video, but afton's on the back row, and there were some boys standing right in front of her for most of the pics. :( they were cute though!)

we went to the arboretum with some friends, and ran into snow white, frosty and rudolf on our way out

rayna was a little enchanted!

and just because i need to include a pic of malachi! he can be SOOO sweet sometimes!