I'm Dreaming of a WHITE Christmas...

We decided to give the kids a WhItE ArIzOnA Christmas!!

Aunt Kerri's man Marcy (who has never seen snow) was visiting from Texas--
So we decided to make a day of it and play in the SNOW!
We drove up North about 60 miles and played in the snow that has been dumping
for days!
(Here is Colton's 1st snowman that he immediately made upon exiting the car door)
Quite the masterpiece!
Dan has a cousin that lives up in Flag (Ken and Kimberly Higginson)--so we met up on the slopes!
(This is about as much action as we got from Ryland--the moment we got on the hill he was ready to go back to the car for some of the hot vanilla chocolate waiting there)

It was the same snow play area we went to last year...except the smaller hill was not run down enough-- and was pretty sluggish with fresh powder to sink in, not slide on!
So we moved on over to the bigger hill where we picked up some SPEED!
Dan went and went down the hill.
I could barely stop him to talk to him.
Dacie missed her naps (all for a good cause), and was on some Benadryl for her recent illness.
She was quite the non-responsive "slug" the whole day!
...at least she was not crying and got the warm clothes!

Aunt Kerri going down the hill (my only shot of her above--l have to borrow pictures from her later)
Kerri and I went with our feet down
AND we ended up with faces and fronts full of serious amounts of snow!
Since we see snow about once or twice a year (as it should be...according to Dan)--we always borrow snow attire.
The people we borrow from did not have quite the amount of clothes available as they did last year.
So we had to improvise--
Layers of pants, shorts, and swim shirts
Sterling even got to wear an old pair of my hiking boots from college (I knew I had hung on to them for a reason)-about 10 sizes to big!
I think that may have contributed to the lack of enthusiasm the kids showed, like they had in the past with the snow! (or it could have been that Sterling got plowed over with his cousin Ashley by a sledder)
They were ready to go home...
We rarely saw Colton (above)-he was grabbing people's sleds left and right (don't leave yours unattended!) and kept going and going down the hill w/ his 2nd cousin Isaac.

These two made out in the snow clothes department--which was good considering they did most the sitting!

(Dacie is snuggled in between Dan's legs in this shot. It was to prove that our 1-year-old was not afraid AT ALL!)

One of the funniest things about the day was Dacie's complacency--

Dan would take her down the hill at a pretty fast pace and then pull her up on the sled.

She laid on the sled and went down the hill without so much as a peep!

(If you look at the group of people above Dan-that would have been our sledding troupe)

Dacie had it made...this was the hardest thing about the whole day was walking back up the hill

Quite the workout!

After all was said and done we only could stay for about 2 hours (perfect amount of time for our snow wimps) before we had to head back to Cottonwood, to make it back in time for Dan;s work party. It was a fun gathering and much too short of a day!

I'm not gonna lie--it is allot of work to pack clothes, meals, blankets, & hot chocolate...for a few short hours BUT it is worth it when you look at the pictures and remember the memories (kinda like the beach-how grateful we are to parents who went to all that extra work for us!)

Colton and cousin Ashley making snowballs with the snowball maker!

HAPPY SNOW DAYS TO YOU!!!