Webelos

Have I mentioned that I love scouts?  What other organization teaches my boys to cook, vote, tie cool knots and be trustworthy and loyal (to name a few).  We participated in our last Pinewood Derby this month.  I can't believe that phase is over.  I'm relieved.  We never really found the balance of actually allowing the scout to do little more than sand and paint his car.  I'd like to see a derby in the future that has two cars submitted per family.  One the boy makes and one the Dad makes.  :O 

Our cub master, Angie has done such a terrific job with the boys.  She brings Bobcat blood (red Kool-Aid) for the newbies to drink and has interesting visitors like veterans and fireman.  And she knows how to keep a pack meeting short and doesn't even provide treats (because who needs more sugar?  Not little boys.  :)  She is awesome!

Christmas in Colorado

For Christmas this year we did only one small gift and used the money we would normally spend to go to the mountains and play in the snow.  We went with our good friends (another family of 6) to the town of Alma, Colorado and rented a house on a few beautiful, snowy acres.  The snow was amazing and we all had a ball building forts and sledding. 

Unfortunately our sea level bodies did not appreciate the rapid assent to 11,000 feet and we all suffered serious altitude sickness for about 3 days of our trip-sob!  Daniel actually fainted in the lobby of our hotel in Colorado at 6000 feet (I guess he was super dehydrated from the long drive from Texas).  This is a pic of him with the super nice fireman who gave him oxygen. Look how green he is!


We also drove directly into a blizzard on our first day in Alma and had quite a time navigating our Texas vehicles around on the ice and snow. We did exactly what you are not supposed to do and exerted ourselves mightily digging our cars out of the snow.  Everyone suffered from altitude sickness and we ended up renting a couple of oxygen tanks, which pretty much saved our lives.  But overall it was a great adventure and the kids loved it and thanked us many times.

We made some great memories with our friends:

Building snow forts and sledding on the hill in front of the house


Digging out our trucks when they BOTH got stuck in the snow!


Cooking up a beautiful Christmas Dinner


Making Chocolate Mice (A Morse tradition)


Playing games, doing puzzles and coloring

If it hadn't been for the splitting headache and worry that my children were going to dehydrate (with us unable to drive through the blizzard to the hospital) it would have been absolutely perfect!  Our kids got along perfectly with our friends' kids and that made it SO nice.  It was also wonderful to have two priesthood holders there- they gave several blessings to sick kids and more than once we all offered heartfelt prayers together. 

I loved that our Christmas Day wasn't preoccupied with a bunch of plastic toys.  Each person opened their stocking and then one gift- we had all exchanged names and had a $20 limit.  Several gifts were handmade and those were the best!  We had so much good food and friends and that was really all we needed.  :)