Day at Brighton

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

We celebrated the first day of 2018 the way that we have for the past 5 years and that has become a family tradition - ringing in the new year with friends at Brighton, then having fun staying up late with a huge neighborhood sleepover, followed by a day of skiing or sledding with friends.

We had a lazy morning after all that partying.

Corey went home last night so he could get a good nights rest and then he picked up ski rentals this morning and brought them up. The kids had fun playing while they waited to go outside. Highlight of my morning was seeing Owen and Daniel swinging, they were both giggling, it warmed my heart

They are so cute!

So much fun to swing in a chair with your brother. They laughed and laughed and swinged and swung and twirled. Cute cute boys, love 'em.

It was also funny to see Owen holding Daniel, as if he's big enough as a 2 year old to hold a 1 year old on his lap.

All the kids went skiing except Sophi, Natalie, and Daniel. I didn't ski either, I stayed in the cabin to get kids out and bring kids in. Corey was a little later getting up than he planned on cause the rental place lost our order and the kids sizes and stuff. He got it all figured out and they were on the mountain before lunch. Corey and Owen went first and spent some quality one on one ski time on the bunny hill. Corey called me when O had had enough, and then I suited up Lily and took her over for a kid swap. 

Every year we tell ourselves that next year we'll have a car with 4-wheel drive. But that was a new year resolution that we made again that we didn't achieve again. Which means we weren't able to drive up to the cabin, so we parked down in the lot and I'd walk down with a kid, drive over to where Corey was, swap, drive back, park, and walk up with a kid. I did it a few times. When I brought Owen back, he fell asleep right away in the car. I drove over, parked, and walked up holding him. Probably just a third of a mile, but boy were my biceps burning holding his little dead weight! I layed him down in our room and he was out for a few hours.

I didn't take off his snow pants, which means Natalie didn't have any to wear to go skiing, but she didn't want to go very badly so she stayed in the cabin and played. I went to take older kids over and was able to walk back in the pretty winter wonderland.

Walking up the snowy road with Mount Wolverine in the distance.

Pretty winter aspens. 

We had a fun day all day, and the kids did not want to go when it was time to head home. Yes, it's hard to face the unfortunate reality that there is school in the morning. Back to reality, noooo! This Christmas break was way too short, I agree. Oh well, what ya gonna do, our family life revolves around public school calendar, they call the shots. So we went home, Joseph helped me unload the car, little kids scattered, older kids were coming with Corey and returning the skiis. This is what our kitchen/great room dumping are looks like after a ski trip sleepover -

I started to sort piles of helmets, hats, gloves, coats, snow pants, sleeping bags, etc etc.... these are the moments when I realized that yes, we do have a lot of people in our family. This is also why we don't do things like this very much, it's too much work! But we're glad that by a miracle we're able to make it happen now and then, it's good memories for the kids. Children, someday we trust that you will recognize and appreciate all the work it took raising you! It's worth it - we hope we'll have plenty of children to take care of us in our old age after we've spent it all for you! Lose your life to find it. Matthew 16:25 :)