Inside Fun

Winter and I are not best friends.

Today when I complained about winter, Karl said: "You DON'T like winter except for the times when you DO like winter."

I said: "That's right. But most of the time I DON'T like it."

I used to love winter. It meant snow shoeing, skiing, ice climbing, and cuddling up to read a good book.

Now, with two wild boys, I dread winter. I still love the fun parts of it like sledding, building snowmen, winter walks, drinking hot chocolate. But day to day life is just hard. It get's dark too early, we need too many layers of clothing, we can't be outside all day and get our jiggles out, and I don't like being cold. We still have lots of fun but it takes a lot of planning and planning makes me tired.

Here are a few pictures of our Sunday afternoon adventure.

My aunt Iris is the best. When we gotback to the cars, she opened up her trunk and inside we found Christmas cookies and hot cider. Just what we needed.

We warmed our hands and bellies while Noah cruised around the parking lot on his bike. There was plenty of ice, snow, and mud to make it lots of fun and forget the cold.

When we are hanging out at home, this is what we do:

lots of Papa-wrestling

reading and laughing with aunt Emily

playing with homemade play dough

gymnastics with Opa Leo

looking at pictures with Oma Evi and cousin Lynn

Here I am trying to get a picture of all three of them but Noah would not budge and is showing off his special camera 'smile'.

Tomorrow I am sending all the boys sledding in the mountains. Although I love sledding and hate shopping, it would be good to have some presents under the Christmas tree. And to be honest, I need a break!