{Hawker Holiday Adventures...

It's been awhile since my last post, so this is my attempt to catch you up on the comings and goings of our family over Christmas break!

Thanksgiving came late this year and I was busy making gifts (since September, really. I'll have to post a few pictures of what I was able to finish.) so our house was finally decorated about mid December. Christmas decorations are my favorite!

We went over to the Baer's for year 2 of homemade candy cane making... it's becoming one of my very favorite Christmas traditions.

I am one of the room mom's for Jackson's kindergarten class and this is one of the take homes that each child got in their goodie bag. I actually like the look of lifesavers better, but because we were making so many of them we opted for plain old Breath Savers (much more cost effective!). Here are the directions.

Christmas morning was a hoot. Sam was up at the crack of dawn and we couldn't contain him upstairs, so he went down and ripped into the goodies that Santa brought for him. Jackson finally rolled out of bed around 9:00 (it must have been a late night for him!) He was a little upset that Santa didn't bring him a real penguin, but appreciated the note Santa left behind telling why he didn't bring him a real penguin!

Christmas afternoon we met up with the Meiner's and the Atkinson's to spread a little Christmas cheer to some elderly people at a local nursing home. It was a riot! I'm grateful that hearing is one of the first senses to go because honestly we sounded pretty bad. It was sweet to talk with a few of them afterwards and hear their stories.

The day after Christmas we met my family in Keystone for a little snowy adventure (none of us really ski, so we were there for the shopping and tubing runs!). We found a killer sledding hill (litterally, killer. As we were pulling into the parking lot we saw a man break his collar bone at the very least). We got all of our gear on and braved the slopes. It was bitter cold and Sammy was not at all enjoying himself so after about 5 minutes he was back in the car with Aunt Kenz (thanks!). Todd figured out how to launch off of his tube and land on his feet, which totally scared me to death since our last encounter with tubes ended in back surgery! All in all it was probably my favorite Christmas memory... (check out the bottom right picture! Todd was at least 5 feet in the air!)

This was fun... we found a chocolate display in Keystone. Everything here is CHOCOLATE! It was a work of art! The tree alone is over 500 pounds of pure white chocolate.

My family came down to the Springs for New Year's. New Year's Eve was a total bust with most everyone in bed by 10:00 so New Year's day we woke up early and went to Sertich Ice Arena for a little family ice skating. That night we stayed up until well past midnight playing games, go figure!