Christmas in the Mountains

We made it without (major) incident to Idaho, in spite of the snow (v. thankful for a long layover and a tortured decision months ago to fly out of Dulles instead of Reagan National, which didn't reopen on Sunday). From the moment we arrived, Christmas was in full swing, fat goose and all. We celebrated with the Idaho gang of Bunns, had lunch with Alison and Amanda, and did a lot of grocery shopping and packing before heading up to the mountains first thing on Wednesday.

This is about as good a picture of the three boys together that we could get.

The snow in McCall was sparkly and the weather was frigid--we woke up to -6 (Fahrenheit) some days, and it never got above freezing the entire time we were there (somehow, -6 didn't keep us from sliding out to the hot tub in the mornings, where our hair frosted over). Because of the snow, we weren't able to drive all the way to the cabin and had to snowmobile in--I stupidly neglected to put my goggles on before the snowmobile took off and literally thought my nose would be frostbit by the time we got there!

Sledding is 15 times more fun when you can hitch a ride back up the mountain from Cole and Papa.

Long train!

The cold kept us inside for a couple of days, where we played games, ate an obscene amount of food, watched hours of special features from Lord of the Rings, and played Guitar Hero incessantly. On Saturday, though, we all bundled up for some sledding and snowmobiling--our first time down the hill, Shaanti and I almost hit a tree and ended up laughing so hard we fogged up our goggles. Good, good times, especially when they end with hot chocolate and apple pie by the roaring fire!

I especially love how Shaanti's small child is clinging to her leg...completely ignored...

Christmas Eve and Christmas were great fun, too. Auntie Fay, Uncle Charley, Katie, David, and their friend Jeannette spend the week with us. We had our traditional Christmas Eve seafood feast on Thursday night, which gets better every time (Jenny and Chad's coconut shrimp took the cake this year).

Uncle Charley, Auntie Fay, and Jeannette

The Feast

Mom gave us each this year's ornament and a Bible verse she had for us, and Jason read the Christmas story from Luke. Dad read The Littlest Angel before we opened our stockings (Santa comes early at the Johnsons'), and on Christmas morning, Cole was overjoyed to find that Santa had brought him the bow and arrow for which he'd been fervently asking.

Mason's ornament and verse

Someone is definitely going to get their eye poked out.

Here were a couple more of my favorite moments: Cole opening his prize from Santa, and Mason...well, being Mason. "Maam!" is his favorite word.

Cole sang us a lovely song called "We're at Granny's Cabin for Christmas," and I think the sentiment was shared across the board. After a wonderful week together, we headed back to an almost-snowless DC, where our last week off is going far too quickly! As Dad said, it's nice when you look forward to something so much and it is exactly what you hoped it would be, and that's how I feel about our Christmas in the mountains.