Christmas Vacation

Having a break from life is the best!  We enjoyed a long Christmas vacation, with school not starting back up until the 7th of January.  We had a great time.  First I'd like to report that after hours spent slaving over a new puzzle we got for Christmas, I finally finished it (myself!).  I'm sad to say that so far nobody in my family has inherited my love of puzzles.  I think that Ella and Ruby have a chance, since they like smaller puzzles, but this particular puzzle ended up being my own personal project (with kids stopping by here and there to check my progress).  But I finished!  Santa brought the kids passes to go Ice Skating, so we took an afternoon and went during our vacation.  We had a great time.  The boys were really good, and even the girls were not bad.  Bryan was terrible.  The girls fought to skate with me so that he didn't hold them back!  :)  Bryan's parents came into town, and we did a little shopping with them while they were here.  Ella bought a new suitcase, and Ruby loved trying on a cowboy hat.  Then the real fun began - The Great Wolf Lodge!  We drove the 5 hours up to Dallas, where we met Jani and her girls there.  We had a wonderful time swimming and water sliding in the middle of winter, and the highlight was once again the enormous breakfast buffet.  We had a great two weeks off of school, and are now counting down the days to Spring Break!