___: December, Part 3: The Days Before Christmas (and Skiing)

December, Part 3: The Days Before Christmas (and Skiing)

In the week before Christmas Grandma Faun arrived, and so did Jake, Michelle, Lizzie, Sadie, and Robie, and then we all headed up to the cabin. The thing I probably like most about going to the cabin is that we are separated from all the normal stuff we have to get done on a daily basis at home – everyone’s together, there’s no work, school, appointments, or homework, (and I finally got all the Christmas shopping/wrapping done before we left town, so that was a relief too – usually I’m more on top of things and have most everything ready for Christmas in advance, but this year I was a little stressed with everything that had to be finished in December. My goal: have everything ready before December next year so we can just relax and enjoy it all).

Anyway, we enjoyed hanging out in the cabin with a full house (9 adults, 8 kids, and 3 dogs).

Dad had a fun idea to rig up a dog sled harness for Brax – Brax will do anything for a tennis ball (including pulling someone on a sled, we found out). The only thing you need is someone faster than Brax to run in front of him with the ball.

And we had a lot of fun sledding one day with Michelle and her family. Unfortunately we pulled into a parking lot that hadn’t been plowed and popped our chain off (luckily it just came off, and didn’t break), and had to spend the first half hour of the sledding outing digging out our tires, but we finally got the van out and could then enjoy the sledding with the kids. I was impressed by how long all the boys lasted out in the snow without complaining of getting cold. It really was a perfect sunny day out with lots of snow. Everyone seemed to enjoy the sledding (except maybe Lizzie, who got tired of it after a little while). But the best part for the boys was that a giant snow plow came to plow the parking lot (after we dug our car out of it), and the snow plow driver let each of the boys take a ride in the plow with him (too bad the camera was in the car at that point and I didn’t get any pictures of them riding).

And here are some fun pictures of the boys skiing (this was technically after Christmas, but that’s ok). We ended up having most of the people in the cabin over Christmas get sick, so we had to juggle who could go out skiing with the different kids while others stayed home with the sick ones, and then switched off. But the four oldest boys got to try out skiing (this was Isaac’s 1^st time ever, and Camden’s 2^nd time skiing, I believe). And Kolby and Lijah got in two more half days of skiing after this too. Their first day on the slopes was pretty short (with a shortage of adults to help out, and an abundance of snowy wind, we ended up going in for hot chocolate before too long, and Michael came to pick up Isaac and Camden, while Mom and I took Kolby and Lijah out for the rest of the afternoon. Michael went with Kolby and Lijah later, and Mom went out with them the last day, and said they did great and even went over some little jumps.