Bringing in the New Year!

What better way to bring in the new year then to sleep right through all the parties? That's exactly what we did! It's not that we're not parties, we'll actually that's true too but really its that we spent the day skiing and we were tired! We had such a good time skiing last year we decided to go again. Once again Keystone came through for us. This year we had no altitude sickness and only one non-ski day. We got in A LOT of skiing and we loved all of it! For some reason I can't upload any of my videos so here are a few pictures from our trip.

Drinking hot cocoa and looking at videos on the go-pro.

Top of the back mountain. Last year we never even made it over here So much to explore at Keystone. 

                                       

They have these little wagons you can use to pull tired kids and ski gear. 

The Springs, this is where we stayed. 

Night times on our trip were wonderful! We cuddled on the couch, watched movies and ate warm cookies. 

Once we got back from Colorado we wasted no time learning and playing all the new games we got for Christmas. We got a lot of games, Blokus, Catan Jr, Bugs in the Kitchen, Twister, Wits and Wagers and King of Tokyo.The boys absolute favorite though? Pie Face!!!! Jaren and I both said that if we saw this game in a store we would have both looked at it and said "nah". And that's why we're thankful someone else saw it and thought it would be fun because it is an all time favorite!!! Basically it works like this. You spin the spinner and what ever number it lands on is how many times you turn the lever. If you don't get hit in the face with the whip cream then you get that many points. So let's say I rolled a 4, I would turn the lever four times. If, in those four turns I don't get smacked in the face with whip cream then I get 4 points. If I do get smacked in the face with whip cream then I don't get any points. Like I said who would have thought this simple game could bring so much joy? A huge thank you to Casey and Cari for sending us this.  Again, I really wish I could get my videos to upload!

No points for Austin on this turn but he doesn't mind! He LOVES whip cream! 

Another new favorite is King of Tokyo. Jake and Kira got us this game and we have already played it numerous times. The directions on this one were far more detailed then pie face but the game is just as fun. Thanks guys! 

                                               

A new year ... A new hair cut! I don't love it but alas, it will grow! 

                                                       

Caleb got invited to a nerf gun birthday party and Austin was super sad he couldn't go to one as well.  said "Hey, why don't we throw our own nerf gun party?" I thought it was a great idea! And the party turned out really well. It didn't dawn on me until after I had offered to throw one that the boys take away from this could be "Hey, every time I don't get invited to a party we get to throw one!" So we had to have a little chat about how this was not setting some sort of precedence! But I will say, we had a pretty awesome nerf party of our own. The first game was in the house. We hung targets up all around the house in values of 5 starting at 5 and going to 100. The higher point targets were smaller and hung higher, the 100 was super small and hung super high. For every 500 points the kids got they could pick out two starbursts. They loved it! Some went to the low hanging, small points and hit them over and over until they got to 500. Others took multiple shots at the 100! For some reason I am having camera problems lately and I can't get those pictures off my memory card, ugh! Our second game we took outside and it was a game of capture the flag. They LOVED this game! I'll let the pictures do the talking. I had to take these with my phone since my camera wasn't working so they're not super good quality. 

The whole gang! Lincoln, Spence, Brad, Austin, Jack, Caleb, Tai, and Jackson

When we were done we had lots of boxes left over! So here is what is now in our toy room. 

Austin and Caleb each have their own room and then the main room is where the chimney is.
They added a garden and a hot tub! 

And one final note about Caleb. He is a huge lego fan! HUGE! Legos are like a magnet for him. If we ever can't find him it's because he is in his room with his legos. When uploading my pictures from my phone onto the computer I had almost 100 that he had taken of his lego creations. Most of them were blurry but this one turned out okay. Sure do love you Caleb!