Skiing in Angel Fire

For Spring Break this year, we packed up and headed to Angel Fire, NM.  The boys had never skied and were very excited.  The area was actually having a bit of a heat wave, but there was enough snow to ski on at least for the time we were there.  We signed them up for two days of ski school and then skied with them on the last day.

Waiting in line at ski school.

It had been years for both Steve and I since we had skied, so it was good to get our skis under us while the kids were in school. 

We are taking a lunch break at the summit here on the first day.

Here comes Joshua in after a day of ski school (behind the guy in red)

And here is Charles at ski school...he loved it!

Back at the condo, exhausted!

Enjoying dinner right next to the slopes...you can see the night skiing behind Thomas

On the last day Charles hung with me while Joshua, Thomas and Steve skied all day.  Charles and I skied a little bit and then went tubing.  Here he is after going a little bit off course into the slush.

Pulling the tube up the magic carpet..

Ready to slide

The tubing was a lot of fun...we got to do it for an entire hour!

Here is a quick video of Charles after his 2nd day of ski school.  You can see that he is bringing up the rear with a huge snowball in his hand!!

The skiing conditions were actually pretty bad because of the hot weather. It was icy in the morning and slushy in the afternoon, but the boys couldn't have cared less. They LOVED it and talked about skiing in 2012 as soon as we left.  Hmmm, we'll see about that. 

Part 2: El Paso After-Christmas Birthday trip

A couple of days after Christmas, we piled in the car and headed the LONG 9 or 10 or 11 hours to El Paso (I can't even remember...it was just long). But, we were excited to go visit family and cousins and throw a SURPRISE party for Grampa Kall. He turned 75 in December, so we all got together to celebrate!

The day after our arrival, Charles had a bit of an accident. Let's just say he learned it was NOT a good idea to go for a bike ride with a dog, attached to his leash, hooked over your handle bars. Gaby (the Perry's dog) saw another dog, took off, and Charles met a brick wall. OUCH! Poor guy was really hurt. This picture is still hard to look at.



The day of the party, we tricked Grandpa into coming into the hotel where we had the dinner and dancing all set up by telling him we were all going out for Larry and Yvonne's anniversary. We needed him to drive them there. Somehow they got him down to the reception room and "surprise!!". He was very surprised to see all his friends there waiting for him...and actually quite touched. We proceeded to eat, drink and dance the night away.

Grandpa with his 11 grandchildren and two grand nephews!



Grandpa and his 5 grown children, Joe, Liz, Yvette, Steve and Larry


Time to dance!!


Joshua half-heartedly does the chicken dance.


While Steve "Gets Down"


The only Kall who wouldn't dance was Thomas. He did this all night! He was too shy to dance. Who Knew?


It was a really great party!!!

The San Antonio Kalls (Larry, Yvonne and crew) drove to El Paso in a rented RV. We thought it would be fun to take a drive up to Cloud Croft and play in some snow. The ride was fun until we got to the top of the mountain where the wind was gusting us off the side of the mountain and we had blizzard conditions. We white knuckled it to the top, let the kids out for about 10 minutes to play in the snow, then headed back down as Larry was afraid of getting stuck.

It was COLD. The wind was blowing so hard it was miserable. Just a couple of quick snowballs and everyone was done.




After making it down the mountain and saying a few prayers for making it, we thought White Sands would be more fun. Since we were "right around the corner" we headed over so the kids could play in the dunes.





It was deceptively cold and pretty windy, so even though the kids wanted to slide down the dunes, nobody lasted long. We loaded back up in the RV and headed back to...snow in El Paso!!

Christmas 2010 Part 1 - Flower Mound

This was the first Christmas back in Texas for Grammy and Papa, so we really enjoyed spending the holidays with them.

Christmas Eve

The boys opened a few little presents on Christmas eve from Grammy and Papa which got everyone really excited for the next morning.



Before we went to bed, we were serenaded with Christmas Carols on the trombone and piano.





After the songs it was cookies and an acrostic poem for Santa, carrots for the reindeer and a note about pouring the milk slowly out of the teapot. Then off to bed!





Christmas Morning...they got so much stuff!
Charles got this game he really wanted called Loopz


AND an air hockey table...that his brothers are playing.


Thomas going through his stocking goodies



And everyone got robes and slippers and marshmallow gun shooters...


Thomas got a new helmet


A $50 bill and an Ihome (for the Itouch he can now buy with all the money he has saved). Look at that expression!



Joshua got some great stuff too, books, a FLIP camera, a new jacket. For some reason he just didn't make it into many pictures.

That night, we went to Grammy and Papa's for Christmas dinner and MORE presents!

Despicable Me (in 3D) and a new book for Josh


A cool hat and a penguin pillow pet just to name a few.


And Charles got this humongous dog that we later named "hairy".



Whew...it was definitely a Merry Christmas!

Fall 2010

Halloween was a blast again this year. We carved pumpkins and went trick-r-treating as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary but lots of fun.


Thomas carved this Longhorn with no help!!! Pretty nice.


Joshua did this scary skeleton face and Charles did an old-school jack-o-lantern.










Thomas went as a UT Longhorn football player (notice a Longhorn theme with him)



Charles went as a policeman with big muscles...



And Joshua's costume was a bit of an optical illusion. He was riding around on his little friend's shoulders. He is with his buddy, Jeremy, who on a dare dressed like Cinderella.


We began the evening at our good friend's house, the Morales', with a little pre trick-r-treating party on the front lawn. Then all the little kids headed out together.



We spent Thanksgiving this year in Flower Moud. Danny and Tricia came into town with the kids too. For Danny's birthday we roasted hot dogs, made smores and had a little "party" at Grammy and Papa's house.



Thomas had to take a picture with uncle Danny because he turned 41 and that is what Thomas had on his shirt!

Uncle Danny is a big Longhorns fan too. He got this helmet for his gameroom.



Next on our list of activities was the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord. We had never seen this before although we always wanted to. This year was a Charlie Brown theme, which I LOVE! It was pretty amazing and fun to see. They keep the temperature at around 10 degrees, so they provide big heavy parkas to see the exhibit.




The Ice Slide!






Thanksgiving day was spent cooking, playing games, and eating!!


The boys enjoy some appetizers.


Grammy and the boys made these placemats one night a few weeks before Thanksgiving. And the placecards were Turkey cookies with everyones name on them. So cute!


Papa pretends to carve the bird!

And here is a shot of the kids table. The meal was great and it was fun to hang out with all the Wintons!!