Christmas 2013

Alta had two weeks off of school for the Christmas break, and Dan took so much time off that it felt like we were all on vacation!

We started off with our annual Brower family dinner. This year we went to the Seafood Buffet at Deer Valley and it was a hit. All you can eat crab legs, among other delicious things!

 And Dan making really weird faces while trying to get a picture together (the lighting was really bad for both these pictures...)

We had a few warm days right before Christmas and after all the cold the girls had to get out and ride bikes:

We went to the Browers for Christmas Eve dinner and stayed the night so we could all wake up together Christmas morning. Lorna even had a gift for each of the girls to open on Christmas Eve: little suitcases, kitties, and new ski jammies/long underwear!

 As excited as the girls had been the night before, I still had to wake them up in the morning to open presents. Alta got new ski boots because the ones she got last year were tiny on her. Which meant that Ellie got those ones as her very own. Alta said, "Ellie got the same boots as my old ones!".

Every time the girls opened a present they wanted to play with it rather than open another one. We actually stopped opening presents at one point and decided to save a few for later in the day! We spent the morning all playing with our new toys (the boys with their helicopters and nerf guns as usual) and got to skype with Patrick on his mission.

Next we headed down to Provo for Christmas part 2. We spent the afternoon at my parents house with Brian, Colleen, and the Heaths. Alta and Ellie loved showing their cousins some of their new toys. It's so fun to have older girl cousins to play with!

Apparently this is how I spent a lot of the afternoon. Thanks for documenting, Dan:

This is one of my favorites. I made the girls these diaper bags for their new baby dolls (I'm hoping to prepare them as much as possible for a baby sister!), and Dan got them mini nerf guns. They loved both so much and carried them around all day. What's a girl without a purse and gun?

We drove back to Draper and ended up sleeping at the Browers again (and maybe for a couple nights after that...we were just having too much fun!).

We had our annual Palmer family lunch (although with small numbers this year!) at Riverside on New Years Eve day but I didn't take pictures.

On New Year's Day, Dan went skiing with part of his family and then I brought the girls up to meet them in the afternoon. Dan rented skiis for Ellie and she went on her first real run! Here she is getting ready to go up the lift with Grandpa. She wasn't nervous at all.

I hiked up and down the hill a few times to watch the girls. Ellie loved going by herself and didn't want to learn the "pizza" (snow plow), just "french fries", meaning she couldn't slow herself down at all. She'd get annoyed when Dan skied in front of her to stop her.

 Grandpa with the girls:

 Grandma with Ellie:

The family:

 We also went bowling sometime during the break with Ruby and Ellie. It was my girls' first time!

 Ellie wanted to do it all by herself; I'm surprised there were no smashed toes.

 Four cute girls!

And that's our Christmas vacation in a nutshell. It was a fun two weeks, but Alta (and me...and Ellie...) was ready to go back to school by the end. I know we did more but I don't have pictures! And now, hopefully, the next post will be a baby!