Thanksgiving Staycation I

The plan was to go camping down south for a few days over Thanksgiving. We were excited since we had not gone on an extended camping trip all year. Camping for one night at a race just does not cut it. Too much prep time, not enough play time.

Unfortunately, our plan fell through. For a few reasons. Karl was super busy and hardly ever home all week. I was not about to get everything ready by myself. It was colder than I like it for camping, even down in Tucson. I had the hardest time finding substitutes for Primary. We had snow in town that was calling our name!

So we bought some snow shovels and went to work. The boys cleared the parking lots of Walmart and the Aquaplex. Luckily, we got a little more snow than seen in these pictures.

Wednesday night the whole family went ice skating. We all had a blast and the boys ended up doing some pretty cool tricks with their little walkers. Not to mention the many races we had... Unfortunately, we left the camera at home. Next time...

Thursday morning was pretty lazy. It was kind of nice for a change. Especially for Karl who is extremely busy these days and spends a lot of late nights in the lab. Noah spent something like 3 hours crafting. He made this awesome air plane while I was at the store with Max. Not having DestructoBoy around sure helps is creativity!

Then we headed up the canyon a little ways to find a place for sledding. It does not seem like the locals do much sledding. No one could tell me where to go and the only people we saw were Phoenicians showing their kids what snow looks like.

We found a nice little trail, and off we went skiing/hiking.

Max found someone else's snowman, really liked it, and ... destroyed it. Of course.

We were also right by a decent hill and let the boys go wild.

We need another few feet of snow, for sure! There are too many rocks sticking out. Other than that it was great!

Fueling break. Hot chocolate and fig bars. Happy kids.

Happy until we wanted to leave after a good 2 hours. Max was ready to go but Noah just can't get enough of the snow!

While the kids were watching a movie, Karl and I made our own little Thanksgiving dinner. Rotisserie chicken, homemade mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, yam'n'apple, veggies, and pumpkin cobbler. After the feast, we played games.

Good times.