Snow and Celebrating: Happy New Year!

We have a tradition of bundling the kids up and driving north once a year to find the snow.  Mitch and I have great sledding/snowman-building/cocoa-drinking memories from our childhoods, and we want the same for our kids.  This time we decided to combine our snow day with our New Year's celebration.

It was so fun!  Even though it was too cold to build snowmen, we had two days of fun in the snow.  Here are some pictures from our fun in the frozen north.

On the last day of the year we found a beautiful place to play and we were the only ones there.

We were also the first ones to sled here after the recent snowfall, so that meant the boys had to blaze sledding trails down the hill.  It was very cold and there was so much snow, which meant lots of work!

But before long they were flying down the hill and having fun, though at the bottom of this run, Brandt turned and screamed up the hill as loudly as he could.  He'd been blasted in the face with powder at the bottom of the hill and it was quite a shock for him.

Another exhilarating moment for Brandt on this day was his first experience creating yellow snow.  Yeah, that is exciting for little boys.

Adam wanted to make a snow angel.

We saw this sign as we were leaving.  Apparently there is a frozen pond under all that snow and ice at the base of the hill.  Oops. We'd steer clear next time.

That night I decorated our hotel room because I'm a nerd like that.  We celebrated by watching movies, playing a ton of games, and eating snacks.  I had a package for the kids to open on every hour starting at 7:00 pm, with something fun inside: poppers, noise makers, a time capsule sheet, special treats (Tim Tam Slams!),  etc.  Just before midnight we switched on the TV to watch the ball drop in NYC. Then the kids pulled our balloon-drop ripcord, we toasted with sparkling strawberry soda, and lit sparklers in the frozen night on our balcony.

New Years Day we played with fluffy stuff in the hotel room, thereafter employing the vacuum.  The kids played with this happily for over an hour.

In the afternoon we went back to our awesome sledding site.  Though still very cold, it was sunny with no wind, and a beautiful day for sledding.  And since we had made our sledding paths the day before, it was smooth sailing.

  

Since then, Brandt has prayed almost daily, "...and thankful for me to play in the snow."
Bright blessings and happy new year to you all!