Fun with family and snow

The day after Christmas (Wednesday) I packed up for myself and the kids and we headed to Snowflake to stay through Sunday.  Nate had a lot of work he needed to get done so he wasn't able to come with us.  Ironically, he didn't end up working at all because he got sick with the same respritory flu I had just gotten over a few days before.  This was the first time I had ever gone on a trip by myself with all the kids, and they traveled great.  I hardly heard from them the whole way there.  And Arie slept until we got just outside of Taylor.  Christy was in Snowflake with her family and Melanie and Jade were there too.  It was fun to see everyone and also to meet Easton, who is only a month older than Arie.

While we were there, we got a fun treat.  We got to watch it snow.  I think my kids must think that it snows all the time in the winter in Snowflake.  Because there always seems to be snow there when we go.  It's funny because growing up, I didn't feel like it snowed all that much.  We must time our trips just right because we usually get to see snow.  The kids were really excited.  Natalie especially because she knew it snowed on Christmas Eve in Snowflake and they got a white Christmas (which had since melted) and she was jealous and upset we weren't there to see it.

Hudson was really enjoying throwing snow and Kelton spent the first several minutes trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

Natalie was super excited and for once, her coat didn't look out of place with all that fur.  She had a lot of fun throwing snow too, but got in trouble twice for hitting both Kelton and Hudson in the face with snowballs.

Snowball fight!  I love how in probably every picture I have of my kids in the snow, someone has a pair of socks on their hands.  Natalie is wearing my non-waterproof gloves.  We aren't equipped for snow.

Damon was napping when the kids were out playing in the snow.  But, the snow started up again after he woke up, so we took him out to play too.  He was so excited to pick up the snow and throw it that he didn't care that he had nothing at all on his hands.  For about five minutes.  Then all of a sudden it hit him that his hands were painfully frozen and he started screaming and came up to me crying for me to fix his hands.  Poor kid.  Later, after his hands thawed out, he wanted to go right back out.  He didn't even care that his hands were bare.  But this time, I decided to not be a failure as a mother and I found some gloves for him.  As it started getting dark and cold, I had a hard time getting him to come inside.

Here's Natalie with Grandpa and Jade.  I don't know why none of them have coats on.  It was cold.  And I dared Natalie to run across the snowy lawn with her bare feet.  And she did.

Arie and Easton--the two new additions to the family this year.  Easton was actually born on Nate's birthday!

Then on the weekend, we got to see more family!  Erica, also traveling alone with her kids, stopped by overnight while on the way to St. David to be with her family.  This meant that Natalie and Callie got to be together again.  I've never seen two girls have so much fun together.  Grandma made all of her granddaughters skirts for Christmas.  Mine and Erica's girls' skirts were made out of the same fabric, so they all matched each other at church.

 My boys got a new set of church clothes from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas.  They both looked so handsome--even if they were both in desperate need of a haircut.

These last two pictures make me laugh.  I wanted to get a picture of just the boys in their new clothes.  Notice in the picture above that Damon and Kelton are not standing next to each other.  That's because Kelton wanted nothing to do with standing by Damon.  So, trying to get a picture of the two of them together was, well... impossible.  Here are the only two attempts I took:

Picture 1.  Kelton is mad and standing his ground.  Damon-- who is trying to do what he is being told, but also trying to annoy Kelton who doesn't want to stand by him--is trying to sneakily inch backward to get next to Kelton.

Picture 2.  Kelton is now really mad, yelling "I don't want to stand by him!"  Damon is no longer being sneaky and is all out chasing Kelton around the room, trying to get next to him for the two reasons mentioned previously.  And probably mostly for the last reason as you can see a bit of a smile on Damon's face.

And this, people, is my life with these two boys quite a lot of the time.  :)

*Random endnote:  In doing this post I realized that I way overuse the word "just."  I edited out about ten of them.  And there are still some in there.