Winter Escapades

The reason I hate playing Sorry can be summed up in one word: Ben. Sorry was his favorite game when we were growing up. He always insisted we play it, and he NEVER LOST! Carson challenged The Master to a game. I don't remember who won, but I can make a pretty good guess!

After our California escape room experience, you could say it's become a tradition for us to seek out an escape room anytime we find ourselves in the same city as B+H. Becky has a friend who creates basically an escape room in a box, which beautifully accommodated our abundance of children. We locked the kids in the basement while we unlocked box after box of thrilling mystery.

We even did it with 15 minutes to spare. We've still got it!

If you're in the Salt Lake area, you've gotta try Lockbox Mysteries! We loved everything about it!

The next day we hit the slopes...of the golf course. For some sledding!

Next up: skating rink! My boys had never once skated, so they had as much balance as a candlestick in an earthquake, but once they switched over to a more familiar medium--scooters--they had a fabulous time. 

Haley fed us the best pizzas of our lives one night, even offering classes to all the kids who were interested in participating.

My friend demanded she babysit my kids before the month was over as we had watched her kids that month. We took the chance to slip away for a morning at Boondocks -- without our kids! HA! Bonus, they were running a New Year's promotion so the price was half off and there were princesses. Now, now, if you think we shoved innocent, little girls out of the way to get this picture, yes, you are absolutely correct. 

Then we hit up the laser tag arena where I was reminded I am as stealthy as...a candlestick in an earthquake? 

But at least I look cool spazzing around the arena. 

You know, I was really upset when I realized the first tie I made of this collection was way too big to fit any of my boys. Little did I know that extra oversized tie I had lying around would prove to be a tender mercy when Ben offered to join my boys' traditional front porch shot. 

All the moments between our excursions can be wrapped up in this picture:

Ben and Haley got a game for Christmas that took an entire week of our free time to complete, with layers and layers of rules and new parts and changing game boards and disappearing cards and depending on who's playing, a lot of whooping and hollering. (<-- that part was me. It was my default setting when I stopped caring about trying to understand the intricacies of the game.) 

Thanks to Ben and Haley, we ended up having a pretty exciting Christmas break!