Happy 2008!!

Happy New Year everyone!! Boy we have had such a great Christmas break. Today however, Dave is back in the saddle and Austin and Taylor will go back tomorrow. Routine is good, but not having one has been a lot of fun this last little bit. Since we didn't go to family for Christmas we tried to fill our days with fun activities and good friends, I am pleased to say we were very successful. Lets start with Christmas Eve. We had some of our friends over that are here for school, they have three kids too. One that is Austin and Taylor's age, one that is Caden's age and a one year old. Tradition in my family is to have a German dinner consisting of Bratwurst, Knockwurst, Weisswurst and hot potato salad. We decided though to go with the traditional Christmas dinner of ham, funeral potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade rolls, and cranberry juice mixed with sprite. Everything was so yummy. The kids played great together and we had a super nice time, probably one of the highlights of the break! Just before getting into bed Austin lost his second front tooth, lucky boy getting a visit from the tooth fairy and Santa in the same night!! Christmas day was pretty low key, we woke up when the boys woke up, opened prizes from Santa, had breakfast, got on the computer with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Bob in Hawaii and opened more prizes. Played with our prizes, ate treats and leftovers, and really just enjoyed being together.

So now that it is officially winter Dave has been constantly checking the snow totals at some of the ski resorts in Utah, he looks at pictures and live mountain cams and really wishes he could just go skiing. Some of you might not know that Dave is a avid skier who wouldn't admit it, but is VERY good at the sport. Out of curiosity and a want to go skiing he found a "resort" here in Indiana after looking at one in Michigan (just to far away) and Ohio. He and a good friend decided to take the plunge and give it a try. Here are a few pictures, those of you that go skiing in Utah will appreciate how good you have it. The first picture is the entire mountain which includes a large tubing hill! The second is the very top of the mountain, yup, it has 400 vertical feet!!

We had a little scare with Austin, on Sunday his right leg decided it didn't want to hold up his weight anymore and he couldn't walk. Because of his history I took him to the ER and they couldn't find anything it might be. When we took him into the Dr. today he thought it was probably sprained. He is able to walk better today but is still walking on his tip-toes. He is such a trooper. For New Years Eve a couple of first year families got together, we had a great time, the house we went to has enough rooms that all the kids we able to go to bed and not distract each other. It was really cute to have all the boys sleeping in a big king sized bed. We ate yummy food, talked, watched a funny comedian show, and played the Wii. Have you ever played a wii? It is really fun, and watching the players was more entertaining then watching the TV screen. I wish I had pictures, I don't know why we didn't take our camera. Oops!! On Tuesday, new years day a few families that we live by went bowling, even though Austin still couldn't walk he really wanted to go. We have such great friends here and everyone had a real blast!!

Well, I think that concludes this entry. Even though this says I posted on the 2nd, I really only started writing on the 2nd, part of it was written today, the 3rd. We hope you all have a great new year and that it is full of happiness.