Winter is WAY more fun with cousins

Kendrick's sister's girls are in town for a few weeks. They live in New Zealand now and were in Wanship visiting their dad during their summer vacation. On Saturday they invited us up for an afternoon of sledding and tubing behind the four wheeler, a bon fire with marshmallows and hot dogs, and just an all around awesome time in the mountains. I have been LOVING the mountains lately so I was thrilled to get the chance to spend the afternoon up there. Kendrick was awesome and made sure to get a lot of pictures. The few pictures I tried to get were taken from behind the 4 wheeler and turned out kind of crazy. It was so nice to spend the day with family we haven't seen forever and even get to meet some new family members. We all enjoyed our time with everyone up there. I am glad my kids got to experience a fun outdoor activity like that with cousins they rarely see. When we got back to Sandy, we went out for Mexican food so the last pictures you will see are of Easton at La Puente shooting the bad guys and then Myles asleep in Kendrick's recliner with Cha Cha. I think as adults we forget how much exercise it is for little ones to slide down and climb back up hills all afternoon...our kids were pooped!

A horse drawn sleigh took us to "the island" where there was a big bon fire set up.

Tay got to hold the reigns!

So did Myles! Jack was offered the opportunity but he passed it up.

This was taken on the back of the 4 wheeler. Kendrick and I accidentally left our snow pants on the living room floor so we didn't get to ride the tube. All I was wearing was leggings so my legs were freezing until Kacey offered to let me where her ski pants. I would love to go back, properly dressed and have the chance to be pulled around on the tube though.

Easton didn't love his ride on the tube but the big kids couldn't get enough of it!

We wedged Easton in between Kendrick and I and I tried to get a picture with him. I didn't realize until we got off the 4 wheeler, that his hat was covering half his face the whole time.

All of us (minus Kacey's girls and Dan's brother and Dad)

Kendrick with Calle, Maryssa and Macee

Kendrick with Dan and his girls. I am glad Kendrick and Dan have remained friends.

Kendrick and Dan

Easton full from eating corn dogs and macaroni (who orders that at a Mexican restaurant?) shooting some bad guys.

A boy and his pup. Our kids came home, changed into their Patriots gear and then lounged around until bedtime. Myles couldn't keep his eyes open once the toasty pig decided to cuddle with him.

Yesterday, instead of homework...

We went sledding!

Here's the thing: Utah winters are kind of crummy. Along the Wasatch front we get a thick and disgusting inversion to deal with for like 3 months out of the year. It is so bad, and I am so paranoid about it, that I will not let my kids play outside when the inversion is thick. So during all of Christmas break my kids were stuck inside. All they wanted to do was go sledding and come home and have hot chocolate while they were out of school and every day during Christmas break we woke up to poor air quality. I promised them that as soon as another storm came through to clean out the air, we would go sledding. When I said that though I was hoping that the storm would come on a weekend. Naturally it had to come in the middle of a school week. I made an executive decision last night and put homework on hold so that we could all go sledding. We didn't have much daylight left so we had to just go over to the school (I feel like it's a crime that we live minutes from Flat Iron and have never once gone sledding there...) but the kids still had a blast. And so did Kendrick and I! We even white trashed it up and blew up one of our WATER tubes to use as a snow tube...

Myles and I

Tay and I

Snow tube, water tube-they both work the same basically!

All the kids

Tay attempting to use a sled as a snowboard 

Tay built her own little Olaf (See the movie, Frozen)

I love this picture because Easton is completely enamored with Tay's snow man. Easton even exclaimed later that night, "I miss our Olaf!"

I am hating winter less and less the older I get. I still prefer summer. And I would still LOVE to live at the beach someday. But winter brings with it cute boots and leggings and lot's of soup and warm quilts. Winter can actually be very picturesque and romantic. I even commented to Kendrick that if Utah is the place where we end up living forever, I want to live in the mountains. I would love to have a home in Park City or Heber. I would love to have a mountain right in my backyard. I would love to HAVE to have 4 wheel drive and a huge collection of boots. I would love to have a wood burning fireplace and have to go out and collect wood each evening (like we did when I was a nanny in CT). So far January is being very good to us!