Winter Wonderland...

Along with most of the Willamette Valley, we were all holding our breath in Stayton on Saturday night with hopes that we might wake up to a winter wonderland.  Although it wasn't exactly "knee deep", we did watch beautiful flakes fall all morning which inspired the best idea of the weekend...

SLEDDING!!!

So, we spread the word after church, headed home to dig out the mittens and snow pants and caravanned up into the mountains until we found 

the. perfect. spot.

The Dukes, minus Isaac... oops!

Madi and James are 3 weeks apart and we always joke that they will get themselves into way too much trouble together... I asked them to look at me and smile when they were standing next to me and it turned into Madi form tackling James.  

It's okay, he's a Duke, he can handle it.  

And as for Madi, I have no idea where she gets it...

As adorable as all the kids were, I'm pretty sure the best part was watching these two shovel snow into their faces for two and a half hours straight. Pure heaven. At one point James found a shelf that was level with his head and had about 5 inches of fresh powder on it.  He stood there forever just scooping it in.  At that same point, Madelyn found a hill she was parallel with and leaned in until she was face first in the hill happily eating snow... the camera was put away at this point!

Adrie and Droiy were sledding maniacs. As Shannon put it, Adrie's true personality was revealed in the snow. =)

Em was quite the trooper. I fed him when we got to our spot and then put him in the front pack where he resided the rest of the afternoon.  He fell asleep at some point and then woke up during one of his sled rides. Such a chill little boy... (When I noticed his ears were sticking out, I DID tuck them back in!!!)

Issac, Adrie, and James

Em, on his first sled ride.  Madi was a pro by this point! And evidently, I was a little nervous to head down the big hill.  

As usual, I failed at getting a group shot or family pics.  I also just noticed that Ben isn't in any of these pictures... =(

I SWEAR he was there! In fact, it was his grand idea to head up the mountain with the kids.  Oh well. We promised to get up the mountain at least one more time this year so that Sarah can come too... she was stuck at home working on her dissertation. Sad day. =(

So, when the sun began to slip behind the mountains, we pushed everyone down the hill one last time and herded the children to the cars.  Our child won the award for the largest fit thrown as we attempted to pull off her soaking hat and gloves and defrost her fingers, but I suppose it's inevitable when you force them to play through their whole nap time.  

We ended the evening at our house making homemade pizzas and sitting around the table chatting while the sleep deprived children found every toy in the house.  When 10:00 rolled around and we still didn't have any emotional breakdowns we decided it was time to stop pushing our luck and quit while we were ahead.  Also Isaac, being the responsible child that he is, asked his mom if he had school the next morning at about 9:00.  He was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a holiday. ;)

I love three day weekends.  

And I love snow!