The Holiday Haze

I have to play catch up here on my posts, now that the holidays are over. We had a great, but very busy holiday season. They went so fast that they are pretty hazy. Mikes parents, Mary Ann (Mike's sister) and her family, and Mary Ann's in-laws and sister-in-law and her family all came to Vegas to spend the Christmas holiday with us. Christmas morning we had 7 kids and 10 adults all crammed in to our living room with family presents and Santa presents stacked to the ceiling. I think it took us until New Years to open them all. Keira's big wish from Santa was a bicycle (tricycle). Come Christmas morning, the trike got trumped by Grandma/pa O'Leary's dollhouse & Grandma/pa Parkyn's fairy dress-up outfit. Devin, finally, got manly boy toys. So, he no longer has to play with Keira's toys and he has no problem reminding Keira which toys are her and which toys are his. An, Reagan just enjoyed tearing up the gift wrap and watching all the excitement of her first Christmas.

Snow.....in Vegas?

We left the house around 2:30pm to go downtown to do some Christmas shopping. While pulling out of the garage, I noticed a few snowflakes mixed in with the drizzling rain and we thought that was the extent of the snow we'd see this year - the usual amount. At 5:00, one of the mall clerks told us that all the freeways were shutdown due to snow!!!! This has NEVER happened in Las Vegas. And, for the firs time, our end of the valley was the hardest hit by the storm. So, we were "stranded" at the mall with no route home. You know I was miserable! HA! By the time we got home, it was close to 9pm. We took a picture, but the neighbors told us that a lot of the snow had already melt and there had been much more. The next morning, I bundled up the kids and we played in the snow. This was a foreign experience for them! It took Devin quite a while to figure out how to walk in it. They loved our neighbors snowman, claiming him as their own, and fixed him up a bit since he was melting. The snow on our block lasted almost a week. It made me feel like I was back in Reno for a white Christmas.

2008 Christmas Pictures

Aren't the kids so cute?