2015 Annual Hayes Family Ski Trip

Another year means another successful Hayes family ski trip. Gus was allowed to join us for the first time ever this year. And we were able to break in our new truck with a snowstorm before we even got out of Arizona.

A few hours later...

 Stopped at 3 Rivers Brewery in Farmington, New Mexico, you know, to go potty.

Day 1 on the mountain. Natalie goes to ski school and Katie skis with the grown-ups. Mommy is back at the house playing with Eloise and Gus, or maybe going to a brewery for lunch.

 

Day 2 on the mountain: Auntie stays home with Eloise and Gus. Katie switches to snowboarding and takes a group lesson. Natalie goes to ski school and is super proud of herself. She asked Mommy to take this photo and send to Miss Jill (her super amazing pre-school teacher). Mommy hits the mountain with Daddy. Natalie melted down just before lunch and that was that. So Natalie and Mommy went to a brewery and shared a cheese burger. Daddy stayed and boarded with Katie.

 

We only had a little snow on the back patio table at the house...

Day 3 on the mountain: Natalie self-destructed. Daddy sold his lift ticket in the parking lot. Auntie and Katie stayed on the mountain. Daddy and Natalie met Mommy and Eloise for lunch... at a brewery.

We had lots of fun snowplay at the house... Gus was in love with the snow and would've played fetch all day every day. He made friends with a dog down the street and they had a few mid-day playdates in the street.

Mr. Jason made us a snow tunnel. Auntie was the only grown-up willing to try to wiggle through it.

 

 

 

New Years Eve on the mountain. Auntie volunteered to stay home with Katie (under the weather), Natalie (melted down too many times on the mountain so she was done) and Eloise. Daddy and Mommy got to enjoy a day together - ironically celebrating the anniversary of their engagement 8 years prior while on the mounatin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Lucky for us, it snowed 15" the night before.

New Years Day on the mountain: Daddy and Katie went alone. Mommy, Auntie, Natalie and Eloise stayed home to play and went to lunch... at a brewery.

 

 

Driving home is always the hardest part.

Christmas 2015

On Christmas Eve, per Natalie's instructions, we made a PB&J for Santa along with a cookie and eggnog. Plus a few carrots for the reindeer. Then Natalie and Katie worked together to write a letter to Santa on behalf of all three of them.

The stockings were all hung by the chimney, er TV, with care.

We have the best kids. Seriously, they are the best. They all remained calm and patient on Christmas morning even after seeing that Santa had filled their stockings. The girls let us sleep in until 715, get a cup of coffee and then begin the Christmas morning shenanigans.

 

Gus is checking out his swag from Santa. Santa is always good to Gus.

The curiosity on this one. Oh to be a kid again.

The Hayes tradition of covering Grandpa Larry with bows really never seems to get old.

Daddy's new-ish truck

Car buying is fun with kids... said no one ever. But it needed to be done so that's what we did. Natalie and Eloise sure had fun sitting in all the showroom cars and eating all the showroom popcorn. Sorry to the dealerships for any messes we made or greasy fingerprints we may have left behind.

"Let's turn the radio up up UP. Now let's go Eloise. We need to go faster. Zoooooooooooooom"

 Anyone else see the irony in this photo?

Eloise's first french fries!!!  Too bad they were from In-and-Out. It'll only get better from here kid.

When this monster of a truck is parked in the garage, it puts the mini in my mini-van.

Mirro tradition

As a kid, I remember my mom making about 8 billion little sugar press cookies. She'd then make frosting in a bunch of colors and put paint brushes in each one. She'd call all the neighbor kids and let us sit around for a few hours and paint/decorate cookies. It was always a Christmas tradition.

The year we got married, my mom sent me an early Christmas gift. Her 300 year old Mirro cookie press and recipe book.

I started doing this a few years ago with Katie but she grew out of the tradition a bit. So this year, I started it up again with all our neighbor kids and while they didn't sit and paint as long as I remember, they all still seemed to have a great time and were happy to take their cookies home to show off.

The number of cookies I made was greater than the kids attention span. So the next night after Eloise went to bed, Natalie was more than happy to sit quietly and decorate cookies with just mommy.

Oops, goodbye 2015

I was trying to be a good mom. I was trying to stay on the ball. I was simply trying to watch the kids, supervise homework, cook some chicken nuggets and download photos from my phone so I could organize them and then update the blog. In my mind, I looked something awesome like this...

But after completely deleting all of our 2015 photos from our computer, I think I finally learned my lesson about multi-tasking. I am going to say this out loud so that I can hear myself say it. You know, maybe then it will actually sink in for real. 

I will never ever mess with photos on the computer while trying to do anything other than mess with the photos (except maybe drink a beer). 

To add a little salt in the wound, I then discovered that our piece of crap backup hard drive wasn't actually backing up every Tuesday morning at 2am. Yeah, I think I looked like this for about a week...

But now I've learned. And as punishment, I will now spend the next few weeks downloading all the photos I blogged during 2015 and/or posted to Facebook and will begin saving them under lock and key. Sorry kids, but these will be our only photographic memories from 2015. Special apology to you, Eloise, as it was your first year of life and many of your milestone achievements are now photographically gone. But don't worry - I wrote down a lot of notes on your calendar. 

Side note: this probably really isn't as awful as it is in my mind.  It likely means that my kids have about as many photos as my parents have of any given year from my childhood, but my kids have the advantage of technology so they could, in theory, print 8 billion copies of each photo if they wanted. But man, it feels so very very tragic.

Bring on 2016!

Holly Jolly Naughty Chair

We inherited a beautiful old chair from Whit's parents. In their house, is was the naughty chair. Grandma Becky had it located right behind the front door, so that if the front door was open, a naughty person sitting in the chair would have nothing to look at other than the back of the front door and the brass doorknob.

We have it positioned in our foyer, near the front door. And although it still serves as the naughty chair, Whit has taken to decorating it for holidays. Here it is covered with holly and a small Santa pillow (because we wouldn't want our naughty kids to get uncomfortable while sitting).

Dear Santa, Please don't bring ANY MORE toys.

I can't find my kid amongst all the toys! Can you?

Pacified.

The definition of pacified...

Hip Hip Horrrrrrrrrrray -- kitchen renovations!!!!

After 10 years, we finally decided it was time to invest in our kitchen a bit. So we said goodbye to our ugly (and very dark) brown laminate countertops. We also decided to turn our kitchen nook into a nice comfortable seating area where people may actually want to linger after a meal. But before we reveal photos of the finished product, here's a little history...


The Frat-house kitchen, pre-2008 (when we got married):

The improved family-style kitchen (post-2008):

We offered to do the demolition of the old countertops ourselves. And of course, Natalie wanted to get in on the action and help.

And now... new white quartz countertops!!!

 

 

The island will be removed, rebuilt and completed in late-January.  A large farmhouse table will be completed and added in early-March. And the super cool old chairs that are currently out in the garage that Whit found at a garage sale that she plans to re-finish will be completed in 2019. Maybe slightly sooner.

God Bless Amazon Prime

For the past 4-5 years, we have done our best not to set foot in a mall around Christmas-time. And thanks to Amazon Prime, the UPS guy, the FedEx guy and the USPS, we haven't had to. Plus, our kids get to stack up all the boxes and make walls, forts and whatever else they can dream of...

Mommy had all the boxes laying haphazardly in the foyer. Mommy's OCD little organizer took care of sorting the boxes by shape and size. Then she built a wall with the big boxes on the bottom and little ones on top. She is a very functional blend of OCD (mom) and engineer (dad).