Snow Snow Snow!

 

Last Friday/Saturday we accumulated a bit of snow! It was quite a lot for us really. And of course everything shuts down for a week when it does! So we enjoyed a nice weekend at home playing in the snow.

 

 

 

We spent our time going for walks and surveying the neighborhood roads.

 



 

And we did lots of sledding! We even headed up to a big hill near the neighborhood playground to do some real sledding.

 

 

Finley was pretty brave, but always wanted to go down with mom or dad. I don't blame him, with a layer of ice on top that hill is pretty fast!

 

 

With everything canceled and shut down we ate lots of warm meals, drank hot chocolate, watched several of our favorite childhood movies, and played a bunch of FIFA 16. The snow wasn't really good for packing so we did not end up making a snowman. Maybe next time. Luckily we never lost power and no one got sick! That is the best type of snowcation there is! Now we just need the snow to melt so we can go back to school! 

Triops

 

Finley's teacher assistant Mr. Powell was so nice to give Finley a Christmas gift this year. He gave Finley his first ever pet! It was a little kit with Triops eggs in it. I had never heard of Triops before, but they are little crustaceans that have been around 300 million years!

 

 The kit came with eggs, food, and a container. First we placed the eggs in warm distilled water and waited for them to hatch. Ours took a little while to get going, but within a week we could see tiny white specks moving around in the water.

 

 

Eventually they started to get bigger and bigger!

 

In our case, we only ended up with one dominant Triops. He kept eating all the other smaller triops as they hatched and started to grow. They say this is normal and can happen.

 

As he grew he would shed or molt his outer shell. It was really cool. The Triops was supposed to live for up to a couple of months, but ours bit the dust after just one month. We think that maybe it was a little too cold for him. Luckily Finley wasn't too sad about it. We have more eggs saved, so we might try again when the weather is warmer. This is definitely my type of pet! 

 

Christmas 2015

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone already! A few days before Christmas we headed over to Chapel Thrill to visit with friends and family.

We didn't get a chance to make our gingerbread house over Thanksgiving so we had to get it in before Christmas!

Finley insisted on making one of the gingerbread men Santa and have him coming down the chimney.

It took some work to get him to stay up there! The other gingerbread man couldn't stand properly, so he was looking up at Santa instead. Ha ha ha!

Christmas Eve we hosted dinner at our house again. We had all our family over as well as a dear friend from church Sister Newman. She was teaching Michelle and Donovan some different ways to play Mancala!

Finley enjoyed goofing off with Auntie Michelle.

We determined that Donovan has stolen my dad's hair poof!

Mimi and Pop Pop!

Here's the whole gang eating dinner! We ended up making the same thing as last year. Beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes, asparagus, salad, rolls, and of course trifle! If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

After dinner we played a little game of charades.

Finley had a lot of fun acting things out.

Proof I was there.

After charades we read "Angela and the Baby Jesus" together. Michelle read it in her best Irish accent and we all really enjoyed the sweet and funny story.

After everyone left we put out some egg nog and cookies for Santa.

We had fun opening our Christmas jammies from Grammie and Abuelo.

Christmas morning came pretty early (I think Finley got up at 6 am!).

It looks like Santa stopped by our house in the night.

First up we opened up stockings.

Then our gifts from Santa. Finley was very excited to get some very specific Pokemon cards.

I think he has a billion Pokemon cards now!

I was also spoiled by David with the new Adele CD and a new phone! I was so surprised about the phone and it was so thoughtful of David to get one for me!

After playing a round of Pokemon, Grammie and Abuelo came over for crepes and more presents.

Finley sure did get spoiled.

We made it over to Mimi and Pop Pop's in time for breakfast burritos for lunch.

Then more presents with the family.

Auntie Michelle got the whole family matching Nerf guns and after dinner the whole family had a Nerf war! It was a lot of fun.

 We had a great time visiting and spending time with family.

It all went by way too fast! We hope you had a Merry Christmas too!