Christmas vacay. Part 1-Long winding roads and remote controls.

Oooooookay!

Here goes...

I've spent days editing and putting this together so you guys had better leave me nice comments after all this work!

Kidding.

This is for you mom and you Becky.

Our vacation started on a quiet, Saturday morning as we awoke to a world covered in white. There's something about the quiet of morning and a fresh dump of snow that makes it seem as though all is right with the world.

We travelled for three hours without stopping. Which is...AMAZING for us. Ususally twenty minutes out the door someone from the back is hollering at us to pull over to pee. Can you hold it? No it's a MERGANCY! So three hours is good time indeed.

When we did stop, we noticed this funny sign.

I wonder what sort of profanities were used in these "ceremonies".

For the most part the kids travel great. We have our lifeline...the DVD player and a plethora of Barbie princess movies and Looney Tunes. Olivis however does not understand why she is strapped into her chair for so long and tires of the movies after a few hours. I don't blame her. Eleven hours in a car is a loooooooong time people. ESPECIALLY for a one year old. Much of her time was spent like this.

But occasionally we had some of this.

And even a little bit of this.

Scary I know. Maybe I should drive for ahwile honey?

After an exausing eleven hours navigating through the Rocky mountains and the hurricane winds of southern Alberta we made it to my parents house. That very night we let the kids open thier presents. And why not? I'd want a reward after having a numb bum for so long!

No Christmas is complete without new flannel jammies.







Months ago Ben saw this remote control dinosaur on display in WalMart and you should have seen this kid's reaction! This is the coolest toy we've seen in a long time. It's a bit advanced for him but it's great because it's even fun for Daddy.



Megan, of course, wanted Barbies. It's kind of her thing now.





What?



Between gramma and grampa Olivia had no end of snuggles.

She kind of hard to reist that way.



This dinosaur is amazing. Truly. "Roboraptor" will roam his environment in free-roam mode if left alone for more than three minutes. A little scary if you're a baby or a dog.

Roboraptor will avoid obstacles using his infared vision sensors and wil occasionally stop moving to hear any sharp, loud sounds. Roboraptor has three "moods", hunting, playful and cautious. Hunting is a little scary but playful is actually pretty cute. Needless to say this thing is a hit in our house. it doesn't hurt that Ben is, and has been for years, obsessed with dinosaurs.

Dustin got to open his present from my brother-in-law early so he could get maximum playing time out of it. This is the beginiing of a new obsession os well over here. There were few moments over the holiday when this thing wasn't being played with or tinkered with.

What can it be?

Can it be....?
It IS! A remote control airplane.

Let the flying begin.

I personally don't understand the appeal. The plane has about ten minutes of flying time (that is if you don't nose dive it into the dirt first). And then they would spend hours puttering around with the things fixing and reinforcing and taping pieces of the kids crazy carpets to the wings so it would be stronger. I wonder if they had more fun fiddling with those machines than they did flying them.




Then again, maybe not....

Stay tuned for parts two and three. And maybe four if I get my act together.