Colorado Chistmas

Here are some pictures of our trip to Colorado the week before Christmas. We visited with Darren's family and Julie's brother and sister-in-law. We had a great time enjoying the snow in the mountains and the family time back in Denver.

Bundled up, ready to play in the snow as soon as we got up into the mountains.

Sledding with Aunt Karen Toasty in his long underwear
Ready to snowmobile Aidan kept lifting up the visor on his helmet and saying "It's just me." Aidan asleep on the ride. On the sledding hill Visiting with the horses for the sleigh ride Roasting marshmallows on the sleigh ride Dancing while waiting to go the swimming pool Sledding again View from the cabin at Snow Mountain Ranch

Decorating cookies with Uncle Bobby & Aunt Missi Hip Hop Dance Off with Uncle Bobby At the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to check out the dinosaursJumping off the bed into a pile of pillowsDancing once again, this time to Aunt Karen's cello

Sweet Treats

Aidan decorated all our Christmas cookies for me this year. Here are the snowmen he made for Darren's office. He really got into and took special care to make all the snowmen different.

Aidan's newest chore is setting the table for dinner. I am not sure how many people he thought were joining us at the table.
Aidan's school class celebrated Christmas with a Happy Birthday Jesus party today. Darren took time off work to come for the fun. Aidan kept asking if Jesus was coming to the party.

Christmases Past

It is hard to believe this is already Aidan's third Christmas. Here are some pictures from the over the years...

200620072008While we were at the mall we ran into Daisy, one of the mascots for the Rough Riders. Aidan may have been more excited to see her than Santa.And he went for a ride on the carousel

Tree Troubles

Saturday started out as a beautiful day at the Christmas Parade.Then we headed up to the Wintergreen tree farm where we go every year to cut our tree.We found a majestic 11-foot tree that Aidan & Darren chopped down. We headed home with tree on top of the car with no problems.It was when we got home the problems started. First the tree stand we always use cracked while we were carrying it inside. Not a huge problem. We went to Home Depot and grabbed another one. With the tree up inside the house, we hurried out to get to Darren's Christmas party.

We got home from the party around 11:00pm and Darren had to water the tree before bed. He started pouring it in and ...TIMBER!! The tree (thankfully still undecorated) crashed down on the floor. Since it was so late we just carried it back outside and went to bed.

Early Sunday morning, Darren went out and trimmed off some more trunk and tried to get it balanced better. We discovered the new stand was missing a spike designed to stabilize tree. After church, Darren went back to Home Depot to get a new stand. With that the tree was finally stable and in the house. We decided it was safe to decorate it. We claimed victory over the tree and exchanged some high fives.About 7:00pm Sunday night, Darren walked into the dining room. He was all the way on the other side of the room when...TIMBER!! It happened again. We were left with a tipped over tree and broken ornaments everywhere (served me right for complaining hours earlier about having too many ornaments for the tree). Here is the aftermath.Now the tree is safely (we hope) tethered to the wall in case it tries to move again.

I figured I better take at least one picture of the finished product because if this thing goes down again it is headed to the wood chipper!

Handy Aidan

Aidan has taken a liking to the show Handy Manny on the Disney Channel lately. He is always trying to stick writing instruments behind his ear just like Handy Manny.

Fall Fun

We made our first attempt at cleaning the leaves off of the yard. By the time we hauled the bags to the back, the grass was covered again. I love the big trees but they have a ton of leaves. Aidan enjoyed playing in the piles.