tony had a conference in vegas at end of september. we made it a family trip and enjoyed spending some time with tony's resident-mates and their families. the kids and i hung out during the day with dad, judy and dakota. we spent lots of time at the lazy river at our hotel, the MGM and watching the baby lions play there. we also got to see the secret garden (white tigers, lions, dolphins) at night which was pretty fun. the kids loved m and m, all the animal things, circus, circus, matt loved stratosphere - kaitlyn stayed a bit back from the windows. due to kids and timing i missed my favorite roller coaster (speed at the sahara) but both dad and i went on the canyon blaster at circus circus and we liked that. matt proved to be quite a whiz at the carnival games, winning a flower, lizard and a giant frog. they were excited that both on the way there and on the way back they got to fly on the disney plane and they liked climbing on all the critters at the airport.
tony and i somehow both managed to have christmas and christmas eve off along with a few days before. so we packed up the kids headed down to sledding, skiing and playing with the cousins at my mom's house. the kids had lots of fun sledding and playing in the hot tub. they had an early christmas opening gifts from cousins on the 22nd before they left the next day (after a stop at the madras aquatic center). on christmas eve tony got to have some peace and quiet while mom and i took the kids skiing at bachelor. kaitlyn is skiing very well independently and matt is somewhere between my skiis and a harness - getting better and had fun after having a twenty minute tantrum at lunch (that's what 2 weeks off OT and 5 days off schedule will do!). we had a scandanavian christmas eve (opened presents) and then opened "santa" presents and stockings in am. matt was thrilled with his batman cave and kaitlyn enjoyed it too - along with her disney princess dolls. they had fun making cookies while mom zoned out reading a book all day on christmas!
