Barbie Drama

Elena has a Barbie problem. By problem, I mean she has a barbie on almost every flat surface in her room.

After Christmas, Karen decided to thin the herd. She removed 8 barbies and hid them at the bottom of a box slated for donating. As soon as Elena returned home, this happened. As you can see, Karen is truly remorseful.

After LOTS of tears, the two negotiated and Karen allowed her to have one barbie back. After all of this went down, I found five headless barbies in Elena's room, stashed away in a box. We are down 12 barbies now.

Christmas

Christmas festivities began with Christmas Eve and my parents' house. Here the kids are showing off their handmade stockings.

If you're ever shopping for Marcus, trucks are a good bet. Here he is with El Toro Loco.

Here is Elena with Aunt Sylvia.

This year, both of the kids were old enough to "get" the whole Christmas concept, complete with waking us up early and demanding to open presents.

We later had Christmas brunch at Karen's parents house.

Pre-Christmas Activities

I am three months behind on blogging. I really hoped someone else would take over, but somehow that never happened.

This year we went back to Silver City to get our Christmas tree. I can't remember why we didn't go to the cabin this year, but I think it was weather-related. Anyway, the last time we we hunted for trees in the Silver City area Marcus was in the oven and Goldilocks was alive and well. Now Marcus is out of diapers and Goldilocks is dead. I pointed out a tree about 150 meters up the hill above the road (we were sitting in the truck at the time). Karen actually said, "Don't you think we can find something closer to the road?"

We didn't make it all the way to the town, as the road was getting pretty bad and I didn't want to chain up. We stopped briefly at the summit, but it was windy and cold, so we came back down to a more protected area for a snack and tree hunting. Actually, Karen and Marcus had a snack in the truck while Elena and I went after trees. Elena did great hiking on her own and actually found this tree by herself. I was almost out of earshot and she kept yelling at me to come check it out.

We took a quick selfie and headed home. No hot springs, no restaurant (or gas station food). We were all business.

Elena really wanted a tree in her room, so we actually cut two trees. Here is hers.

And the family tree (along with the new family dog):

We also took in the Caldwell Christmas lights. Elena's friend, Piper, joined us (see below). The girls had two years of school together and have maintained their friendship ever since. Piper is a full head taller and has about 4X more hair. It's hard to believe they are the same age.

We were joined by some other Malt Rd. residents.

The weather was really nasty, with wind and quite a bit of rain. As you can see, the kids were bundled up at times.