Christmas (part 1)

Okay, I'm finally getting around to posting about Christmas...better late than never (plus I'm only a month behind...)

Last year Christmas was such a blur. We left for Utah when Robby was only six weeks old. Packing for two kids, plus snow stuff, plus Christmas stuff just about did me in. On top of all of that Robby still wasn't sleeping through the night and I was only beginning to uncover his dairy problem so he was fussy and uncomfortable most of the time. Needless to say, it was a stressful time and I look back and wish I could say that I had taken more time to savor the holidays.

This year we were able to do just that. I felt like we had more meaningful, spiritual experiences as a family. We were able to slow down and take it all in a bit. However, we were not quite ready to spend a Christmas on our own, so we decided to drive the 15 hour drive to Colorado to spend a week with John's sister and her family. And we are so glad we did! It was a wonderful, fun, and memorable trip.

About the drive...all I can say is, I love my van, I love my van, I love my van. It was so nice to have plenty of room to spread out, sleep, and pack as much stuff as we wanted. We even let the boys get their wiggles out by jumping, westling, and rolling around the empty back seat every once in a while. Perfect! It's a long drive, but the boys did great. Here are a few snap shots of our "car fun."

When we got to West Texas, we were thrilled to see that they were still in the middle of harvesting the cotton from the cotton plants. At one rest stop, we couldn't resist running over to check out one of the bales of cotton. Tyler thought it was pretty cool and took a few minutes to jump into a huge pile that had fall apart from one of the bales.

To keep the boys busy, we borrowed my friend Laura's idea to bring along a roll of tin foil for tin foil sculptures. It was AWESOME. Tyler was engaged in this activity for over an hour. We made a tin foil chain that we had hoped would decorate the entire van, as well as several cool hats.

Tyler made a cool monster guy,

And we made several creations for dad to wear while driving (what a good sport, huh?)
We made it to Colorado all in one piece and ready for lots of holiday fun with family and cousins.