The Ranch

The day after Christmas we drove up to Grandma Connie's house 'The Ranch' and met up with the rest of the family. We had a delicious dinner followed by more gifts. That night then turned to game playing with went on basically night and day for the entire duration of the trip.

Emily (wearing pajamas #2 for the evening) took a little time out to play with Maggie. Maggie has been Emily's favorite kitty since-well since forever. This is the first trip where I felt that Maggie didn't necessarily need to be fearful of her life.

It is very easy to be comfy at Grandma's and this was Emily's comfy position of choice. She would say, "More pillows."

Next came the outside fun. I'll first start with the adult outside fun. We went skiing two days and it was so wonderful. I love skiing. Love it. I had never skied before college, and I'm not super great, but the feeling of gliding through the snow, being in the mountains is perhaps one of the greatest highs there is.

Back at the house I took Emily sledding one morning. That was a lot of work! They weren't even big hills, I wouldn't call them little hills, they were miniature hills, but carrying Emily up them was exhausting. She did think playing with Brooke and Lauren was cool. They attempted to build a snowman, but didn't get very far.

Also one afternoon Justin, Kody, Kathy, Emily, and I went out on the snowmobiles. Emily kept yelling, "faster." Then Justin and Kody had built a jump so when Kody would jump, Emily would yell, "GO KODY!" It was pretty fun. Sadly one of the snowmobiles broke so we had to cut that adventure short. We also lost a glove. Bummer.

Here is my collection of snow pictures. Of course, I couldn't pick just one because they all show how much fun we had. The fashion sidenote is: Emily is sporting her new snowsuit she got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Van Dusen.

We found some miniature ski goggles. When we asked, "Who wants to go skiing?" Em said, "Emily does!" Maybe next year darling.