A Christmas to remember

This year our Christmas was radically different than any year past. Mainly, no family. We decided to go away for Christmas this year. There were numerous reasons; an ailing grandfather we needed to see, a grandmother who was spending Christmas alone, scaled down decorating due to apartment living. About a month ago we decided to head north for Christmas and for the first year ever, spend Christmas day just the four of us....no where to be, no one coming over for lunch or dinner. Nothing. Just the four of us. It was magical.

We headed to upstate New York on the 19th and played in the snow and visited Rick's grandparents for a day. The boys had a great time sledding and snowboarding.

Look at my husband! Snowboarding no less. I tried it and after nearly knocking my arm out of socket twice while falling, I decided to stick to the sled! It's sad my 8 year old can do more things than me!!

We ate a ton of great food - especially at Grandma's house and saw lots of pretty lights.

Here are the boys eating homemade pudding at Great Grandmas!

These were particularly pretty in the downtown part of Rome, New York. They had a whole lights display with music. It was very sweet. We intended to leave Christmas Eve and head to Hershey, PA but the boys wanted to have their first "White Christmas" so we stayed and left Christmas Day.

Here is David writing a note to Santa on Christmas Eve.

I am so glad we stayed. Oswego, New York had a white out Christmas morning....basically a ton of snow in a short period of time. The kids woke up to lots of presents under our little tree in the hotel room and snow falling outside. It was a beautiful day.

This was what it looked like outside our hotel room Christmas Day. The snow was falling so hard you could barely see across the river.

This was Jason opening his Leapster 2. I guess he was happy.....he's so hard to read. :)

David was equally happy opening one of his gifts.

It was a wonderful time and one that we will never forget. I'll post more from Hershey next.