Ice Capades, Trains & a Santa Bum

Christmas!!!

It's over.

Here was ours...in a nutshell

(that is if your nutshell is the size of a small planet).

Santa loves him a good cookie.

(Nate wrote the letter this year)

 The boys did their best to be good the last week before Christmas,

and Santa rewarded their efforts.

He brought them a hand-made Lego table, A Star Wars Lego Ship and
 a Samauri Castle...and a choking device?!?

Let's try that again Spencer. Thanks.

 All the boys enjoying the Legos...

or trying to...

 Aren't these the coolest Little People ever? 

I think so.

Harrison does too.

All the boys watching Dad assemble some Hexbugs.

(note that Harrison is so riveted

 he is grabbing Nate's hair.)

And lets just end the festivities with a....

Santa bum.

(I bet you thought you were gonna see

 a homeless person in a Santa hat, didn't you?)

 During Christmas break, we decided to get the boys out and about

before I ripped my hair out

We had a little adventure to the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie.

We looked at some old trains...

sat on railroad tracks...

froze a small child

  because his genius mother forgot his coat...

admired some mountains...

gawked at a ginormous log...

saw a creepy wax train conductor...

and saw some cool old stuff...

 It reminded me a lot of England and all the old trains we saw while living there.

Some may not agree, but I think there are a lot of similarities between 

North Yorkshire, England and Western Washington.

(minus the mountains and evergreen trees, of course)

See!  We even saw a truck from there!

hehe

 trains, trains...and more trains.

 You are STILL here?!

Way to go! You deserve a cookie. 

 Go on and get one, you little so and so.

So Mom decided we still needed to get out of the house a bit more

or risk sporting the bald Britney look...

so we went Ice skating!

 Spence in his "blades of death."

That sounds a little more manly than ice skates, right?

Ya, we will go with that.

 This is possibly the best idea ever in the world!

Maybe this is old news, 

but for someone who grew up only experiencing ice in her rootbeer, 

this was a novel idea!

My boys had so much more fun ice skating thanks to those little walker things. 

Sure, they still fell a few times (they do have my genes after all),

 but it definitely minimized the carnage.

My ice capades-watching buddy.

Here are the boys taking a break while Dad pulled some sweet Cutting Edge moves.

(find it, see it, love it.)

And here are the boys about to go home...

 Nate did not take the news well.

Guess we will be visiting the ice again soon!

And that was our planet-size nutshell Christmas!

Whew!