Rewind!

Ready? Let's go back a week or two, shall we? We'll head back to Ohio....an inch or two of snow left on the ground and some minor sledding for the boys....
Here's Owen enjoying a push from Steve-o:

Whoops! Sleds and snow are a slippery combination!
Things got hairy for a minute there....no worries. He recovered quite nicely.
Whenever AJ was outside, he was eating snow about 95% of the time. He really really likes snow.
A lot.
I guess it's tasty.
And yes, i told him to avoid the yellow snow.
But when he wasn't eating snow, he was sledding.
On to Michigan then!
Christmas Day.....and fun times with the entire side of my family.
Here's my niece Abby, posing for me.
And showing me her beautiful new jewelry....
And with my sister Shari....(Abby was in a picture-taking mood that day)
And my nephew Kendrick - the smiley-est kid I know. Next to Tyler. :)
Abby's big-girl makeup....
Which she thought would look good on me...
And A.J.....
Even the dogs got presents....
Johnathan got his own camera, as did A.J.....see? runs in the family....
My dad and Kenny.....
My mom with Tyler...
My brother Rob, attempting to stay out of the way of the barrage of children and toys....his preggo wife Amanda trying not to doze off on the couch above him....
Nephew Robby playing with his new MP3 player....
A new train for Owen...
Tyler chilling with his Uncle Joel, who was checking out his new phone....

And then we were off to the hotel/water park.
As mentioned before, Robby was the first brave soul to head down the slide....


But AJ thought it looked cool too.....
So he got Steve-o to go with him. About 35 times. In a row. Steve-o says it is QUITE possible (hypothetically of course) to be very sore the day after water sliding.


A few days later....a Christmas stand-by: Gingerbread houses. The kids all did one together.





Yes, it's rubber-banded together. It was rather gooey and structurally unsound until the frosting dried...
While we waited for the icing to dry, Amanda took a nap...because apparently pregnant women need a lot of extra rest. **rolling eyes** I know...she's such a wimp. I'm so glad I wasn't such a pansy about sleeping, eating, and whining the entire time I was pregnant - aren't you?
My mom stayed inside with Tyler and Owen (who wanted to play video games on the computer), and dad came outside to take pictures and help. Steve and my brother were out on a "man-date" to the movies and a hockey game so it was just me and the kidlets.
The snow wasn't very good packing snow, so a snowman was out of the question. We built a snowfort instead.

Snow-forts are a crucial childhood snow structure. They're necessary to defend yourself from evil siblings and snowball-wielding neighbors. And Yeti's.

Cooper was on the lookout for Yeti's.

Did I mention that Cooper LOVED the snow??



Robby sneakily enlisted my help in making a kick-butt snow fort and promptly threw snowballs at me when my back was turned. Traitor.






This was a highly superior snow fort. AJ called it the snow castle. it had an upper level and a lower level. The lower level was reinforced with ice-snowbricks and also boasted a dug-out cave for extra protection. To the right of the photo was AJ's snow fort. On the back there was an escape slide for a quick exit if things would go wrong...

Unfortunately things DID go wrong. For me.
Too bad there was no escape for the photographer/snow fort engineer. The ratty traitors. They turned on me.



Every last one of them.....


Even the cute "pwincess", whom I valiantly defended against the Yeti's.


punks.



Hmmmm....what else??

Oh yes.....Did i mention that Tyler is sitting now?

The end.