Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We had some early fireworks last night.  The kids and I jumped in the back of the van with lots of blankets and watched Keith light them in the street.  It was so cold here!

 The boys were brave and jumped out of our warm spot to light some sparklers.

 Then the kids went to bed and Keith and I fell asleep on the couch watching The Princess Bride.  We didn't even make it to midnight!  Ha!

Today we gathered as many warm clothes as we could (and we discovered that we really don't have many at all) and went up to Payson for the afternoon to play in the freshly fallen snow.  

It was fun to see the mountains covered in snow on our drive up.  We weren't the only ones to pull off right here and get a shot of the Superstition Mountains.  I should have taken a picture of all the people taking pictures!  It was fun to see everyone so excited about the snow!

 If you enlarge this picture, you'll be able to see that all of these saguaros have cute snow hats on.  At least that's what they look like to me.  :)

 We never see snow plows in our area.  The boys thought they were so cool!

 All the trees looked so pretty covered with snow!

 We forgot our hats at home so Keith ran into WalMart to get some new ones.  He found this awesome one for him!  Pretty snazzy!

 Snow angel boys.

 Camille loved it, but got so cold and spent most of the time in the car.

 Our hot chocolate was soooooo hot!  

So we put it in the snow, waited a few minutes, and then it was perfect!

 A mom and her daughter built this snow-woman and asked us to take their picture.  And so we posed with their snow-woman too.

 We had fun sledding.  The boys moved over to a bigger hill with some other guys and they made an awesome sled run with a little jump at the end.  Our boys really flew on it!

 I got in on the snow angels too.  I totally felt like a kid again!

 Another pretty tree.

 The boys and Keith made this snowman with some of their sledding buddies.  It has cookie eyes and the mouth and nose were made from our Chex mix that we had brought.  Brett was so cold by this point that he just kept crying.  We changed everybody into dry clothes in the car.  The boys both cried the whole time we were getting them dressed because they were so cold.   And then Grant stopped all the sudden and said, "This was so fun!  Let's do it again tomorrow!"

 We were so thankful for the heater in the car!

 We got one last shot of our friendly snowman.  I think he's so cute!

We stopped at Denny's for some dinner and then headed home.

We had so much fun!  We learned a lot for next time too...like it wouldn't hurt to get some real snow boots, pants, and gloves!