Crack This

This last week all of the womenfolk (Carlie, Beth, Nana D, me, and the girl cousins) went to go see the Nutcracker while all of the menfolk watched the boys. It was great! It was the first time I had seen the Nutcracker performed (no, Casa Grande's stirring rendition of the ballet does not count). I will say I was a little disappointed that they decided the Sugarplum Fairy was an optional character. Clara danced to the song, but it was still beautiful. It made me miss being able to devote more time to taking dance.

Getting there was easy... until we realized we had made 3 circles and still hadn't seen the building. "Oh, wait,wrong address. It's on a different street." We'll leave the navigator anonymous. We'll just say she has long, black hair and her name rhymes with, "Harlie." But we still got there :) However, the traffic was horrendous afterwards- it took us 2 hours to get from the parking garage to the freeway. It should have taken us about five. I'm sure I've knocked off at least 5 years of life from everyone that was in the car. I'm not the nicest driver, and it made it even more lively since the roads were covered in ice. Good times!

While we were there, Kent and Grandpa Hills (Chris and Chad joined later after work) watched the boys. Kent took Brody, Zane, Taylor, and Braden sledding down the street. They had a ton of fun, and Brody got some serious speed on the hill. I had tried to go down the same hill, but I was too much of a sissy to not drag my feet to slow me down. Here's a video of all 4 boys giving it a go.

And this picture was just too funny not to post. Doesn't he look a little tipsy?

I'm Dreaming...

...of a white Christmas. And I might just get one this year.

It's been snowing a ton here lately. It's awesome! I've always figured that if it's going to be cold, it might as well snow. That way you have something to do. But it doesn't bode well for drivers. I can't count how many cars I have seen stuck on the side of the road. Salt is apparently too harsh on the environment, so, thanks to tree-huggin' granolas, they don't salt the roads here. So to spare our lovely environment, we are forced to drive on perilous roads with white knuckles going 10 miles an hour while people are sliding all over the place. Good stuff.

The first day it snowed we made some ice cream (or should it be snow cream?). I had never heard of it, but it was actually quite yummy- milk, sugar, vanilla, and some snow! Taylor wanted chocolate, so then we tried it with chocolate syrup.

So with snow comes sledding. Kent hooked up our little saucer sled to the bike and pulled Taylor all over the neighborhood. He loved it.

On a different note, Erik had his 9 month appointment this past week. He's getting a little scrawny. He dropped in both weight and height percentile, but seeing as he's happy and still growing anyway, I figure he's fine.

He's also standing up by himself quite a bit now. He's taken a step or two, so we'll see how long it takes him to actually start walking.

We Really Are Alive

Okay, so it's been about a month since I did a post. We went to Utah and California for Thanksgiving since Kent was working at the Children's Hospital in Seattle. Anyway, I'm too lazy to play catch-up with posts, so I'm just starting over. So Happy late Thanksgiving.

Here's a little something to kick off the holidays (okay, so Christmas is in 8 days, but whatever). All four of us worked really hard at perfecting our sweet moves. And this is actually really close to what Kent looks like when he dances.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards