Well, this year, we were all dreaming of a white Christmas, and just like last year, we got one. Too bad we had to drive 9 hours to get there, but the drive was well worth it! This year, we decided to head up north to the Black Hills and celebrate Christmas the old-fashioned way, in a log-cabin, with a wood burning stove, high in the mountains (or hills :) of SD, near the old historic mining towns of Lead-Deadwood. We did enjoy a few modern amenities though, like, a hot tub on the deck, snow-mobiling, with the snow-mobile trail being only a half-mile away, skiing, tobogganing, sledding, and snowboarding, to name a few :) We left a day early and arrived in Rapid City the first night, and to surprise the kids, we decided to stay at the Marriot, which had an indoor water park. You would think that will walls of slides, a lazy river, rafts, and a giant play area they would be overwhelmed with their choice of things to do, but (not) to my surprise, their favorite area was the hot-tub. Well, we woke up the next morning thinking that we would just take our time getting to the cabin, well, I should have eaten my words, cause we DID take our time, but not because we wanted to! We woke up to a sheet of ice on the windows, so thick that you couldn't even see out. Rapid City had an unexpected ice storm and everything, including our car, was covered in a layer of ice. So we did what anyone would do, we let the car warm up for a half-hour and tried to scrape the windows, with what-ever we could find. (It's a good thing we left our scraper at home ): We did manage to get the car scraped and warmed and then headed to the store to load up on groceries before we skated, slid, tried to drive, into Deadwood. Well to say the least, the drive there was beautiful....talk about walking, or should I say driving, in a winter wonderland. The cabin was beautiful and we even had our own little flock of turkeys right outside as we pulled up. The first thing we did when we got into the cabin was lit the fire and enjoyed some hot cocoa. Later, the kids and I went sledding down the hill in our driveway, while Matt and JD, snowmobiled on the trail. (They went almost 50 miles that first day on their mobiles! ) The next day, we went tobogganing and snowboarding down at the Mystic Miner Ski Resort. Christmas Eve/Day was spent in the cabin, enjoying the fireplace and hot-tub and watching Christmas movie classics. I will say that this was one of our favorite Christmas memories, and we all very much enjoyed a very peaceful and relaxing White Christmas in SD.
~Views from our cabin. Beautiful winter-wonderland scene~
~JD riding on his snow-mobile~
~Our beautiful cabin in the woods~ (family enjoying the hot-tub)~
~Enjoying the hot-tub again~We spent a lot of our time in there, nothing like having frozen hair while sitting in the 103 degree water~
~Christmas Eve dinner~
~(Hey JD, you can look at the camera, Santa hasn't come yet)~
~Grant's new hat~ I asked him to pretend like he was working, I guess work must be too much for him~
~Ava and I with the new "Snuggie"~ We always joked about the Snuggie, so Matt and JD thought it would be funny to get one for me as a joke, well the joke was on them, because I got each of them a Snuggie too :)~(okay, theirs wasn't exactly a "real" Snuggie, I got them the new and improved "Fuzzie Wuzzies")~
~My special gift from JD, a Rosary made from my birthstone, a Peridot~
~(He even used his own money to buy this one:)~
~Special gift made by Ava for our family~Hand-made card and ornament with her cute little face on it~
~Whattttttt????????~Okay, I just had to put this one in....I double-dared Matt and JD to make snow-angels because they were getting too hot in the hot-tub, so they did it and here are their angels, don't think you could even pay me enough to roll around in the snow with only my swimming-suit on!~
~The Kids and Matt racing down the hill...Snowboarder vs. Sledders~
