Snow Shoeing & New Year's

We've been dying to go snow shoeing with the kids for a couple years now, but they were too little or not enough snow. We decided this was the year to do it. Unfortunately, we don't have a car with 4 wheel drive so we couldn't go anywhere really cool, and we were worried how long the boys would last so we just did our usual hike up to pretty valley.
Before we left home it was super cold and smoggy, but as we were driving up the mountain, we all of the sudden came out of the smog to beautiful sunshine and blue, blue skies! It was glorious! The only bad thing was that we had lots of layers on and with that sun shining, we got hot fast. We all ended up taking off our coats. It felt great! The boys did pretty well. Max is a Sherpa. They had fun sledding down the hill we hiked up and since the sun was shining, the snow was all sparkly. We also got someone's fun dog to tag along with us. It was the best dog. Never barked and kept jumping around the snow and making the kids giggle. And that's all the dog time we need for the year! No one's asked for a dog since!
New Year's Eve was our usual party with my family. We ate tons of food: Heidi's jalapeno poppers, and Toby's barf dip was the best! Then played old school Nintendo power pad and loved that the old people could totally beat the kids. And we had another TV set up to play Greg's new retro mini nintendo he got for Christmas. It must have been a lot of fun because everyone was super tired and left at 8:30! I know, lame, but I wasn't complaining and went to bed for a good night's sleep before the best extreme sledding ever!!

The inversion we left behind.

The beautiful blue skies!

Max fell and couldn't get up and was really mad we took this picture.

Sam made a seat.

We made it! Toby carried the sled for us.

The awesome dog that joined us.

This is a bad picture of the kids sledding down the hill.

This is a hilarious pic that Toby wanted to get with the 3 kids. Sam was in crazy mode and wouldn't hold still so Megan's trying to help and Max is in the back refusing to look at the camera because he's the middle child. A cherished memory for sure.

2 TV's going!

Oh yeah, old school baby!

The double shot was always in use.

Zack was begging his parents to find him a powerpad because then he could 'exercise and have fun'! Couldn't agree more!

We watched some of our old family movies. Awwww, Mom & Linz. Sigh.

The next day we woke up to MORE snow and this snow was actually packable so Sam finally got his snowman!