February fun

Every year on January 1st, we take the boys to Flagstaff area to play in the snow. Well this year, that was not happening. So we didn't talk about it much after that. Our good friends were planning a trip mid-February and we briefly talked about going together for the weekend. It was talked about a little more and we decided it would work out, hoping there was enough snow when the weekend came. We pre-paid for a cheap hotel and got all packed up. So here are some pictures from last Saturday and a little of Sunday with our friends.

 

Snowball fight!

Mommies sitting by the fire chatting.

We went back to the hotel to rest and the kids went right back outside to play in the pile of snow by the fountain. They built a partial wall while they were out there.

 

 

Mid-afternoon, we headed back out to sled more. We went to a different place than we went in the morning hoping we could find a place to build a snowman we could shoot with Jim's paintball gun. This has been a yearly tradition the boys and Jim love as well.

 

 

Here is the finished snowman, shortly before the demolition began.

 

 Dad's reloading the gun. All of the kids got to shoot at the snowman too.

 And here is the snowman all shot up. His hair and arms were all spread around him, poor guy.

The kids finished up the day sledding a little more.

 

 

 

 That evening after getting warm showers, we had brownies for Kevin's 9th birthday. He wanted an Awesome face decoration this year. Apparently that is the name of this smiley face. It is candy like, so Kevin broke it into pieces and the kids all had a piece of that too.

 

 We got Kevin a gumball dispenser. He has been wanting one for several months. He also got some cards and money from Grandparents.

 Sunday morning we all drove up to Jerome. If you remember, Jim and I took a trip there for our anniversary a few years ago. We thought it would be fun for the kids to see the old town since we were pretty close already.

After walking around for a bit, we stopped at the park area for a few minutes before heading back into the cars.

The dad's went up above since the whole town is on a steep hillside. Here is a picture of us mom's on a climbing structure and the boys on swings from their view.

 And here are the dad's from our point of view down below.

 

 

 

 

 

 We had a great time! This past Wednesday, we had a freezing storm blow through Phoenix. We had what we thought was hail coming down fast and hard, but when we went out into it, it was soft slushy clumps. It stayed on the ground for about 4 hours which is strange for this area. Here are two pictures of the aftermath right outside our front door.

And here is our little Charles mouse, all curled up with a sock in the corner of the aquarium. He really likes the warmth of the salt lamp.

 Last is Jim's newest little project. He got some letters and put his website on the back of each of our cars. Hopefully a little bit of free advertising. Have a great week everyone!