A Montana Christmas

We haven't been back to Montana for actual Christmas in I don't know how many years so this year we decided to make the trek.  I had this dream of being back there for Christmas with my family and cousins and Grandma.  This year the weather cooperated great for the actual travel.  We were loaded down with all the gifts, snow/cold gear, skis, etc. That we had to modify the seating in the car and have just 4 seats available and the 2/3 folded down in back to make enough room for all the stuff.  We even had Stella along!  We took off the morning of the 23rd probably at our earliest leave time of around 8.

After our travel day we headed to church the next morning.  Here are the younger three before and at church.

After lunch out we decided to finish up our Christmas shopping.  We stopped a few different places so that each girl could find their sister gift and they had a little shopping to do for me and I had a few last minute things to grab as well.

A few years ago we started a new tradition of one gift on what we call "Christmas Adam".  We got this name from some friends who have an Adam as a son and decided that since there is a Christmas Eve there should also be a Christmas Adam...lol! Anyways I started giving a puzzle to the family on Christmas Adam so we could work on the puzzle as a fun pass time while all the other Christmas festivities are going on.  This year we received a Thomas Kinkade Disney puzzle of Peter Pan. (Did you know the girls will be doing Peter Pan as a ballet this coming spring??)

After staying up super late on Christmas Adam wrapping presents...I think it was 2 am before I got to bed.  I guess that is what happens when you have to haul/ship all your gifts and only have 1 day to wrap them!!  The next day was the big family event which my mom offered to host at her house.  So I was helping clean (since most of the stuff laying around was ours) and prepare food for the evening.  It was a busy day and then a fun evening that flew by way too fast.  I think we had 26 people in total! We had our traditional chili and/or oyster stew along with a lot of appetizer type food and snacks.  It was all so good, but even better for me was all the family. The cousins running around and playing and lot of good conversation.  Very different from my families typical Christmas Eve, but fun for my kids to see kind of how I grew up celebrating Christmas Eve.  Here are some of the pictures I got from the night.

I love this one!  I wish Claire was in it!

Brinkley and Rae really love to play together.

All the boys listening to a great story from Grandpa Ken

After all the cousins left we had our traditional open one present on Christmas Eve which is always new jammies for that night.

With cookies for Santa

Christmas morning the girls were up bright and early ready to open presents.  The usual excitement of Christmas morning.  They all got lots of things they liked.  I feel like it gets harder every year to shop for these girls.  One they have so much stuff and I have 4 girls...so keeping it fair and finding things they want and/or need that we don't already have a ton of is hard! To say the least!

Then Diedrich and Piper came over to get their presents from Grandma and Grandpa before we headed over to Grandma Betty's house.

We headed over to Grandma's house for Christmas dinner of ham and cheesy potatoes and some other yummy sides.  My cousins Danny and Jenny came up from Missoula for the day which was so great to see them as it had been a REALLY long time since I had seen them. The dinner was yummy and then we played a game of code names. Here are a few pictures from the afternoon.

Cousins!

Have I mentioned yet, my Grandma has cancer?  Well she does Hodgkins Lympoma and she has been going through treatment since September. She has lost her hair in the process so she wears hats as they are more comfortable than wigs.  She had a great idea of having all the kids wear hats with her.  I really love these pictures!  They will be treasured forever!!

Me and Grandma...another treasure!

Here is the finished puzzle of Peter Pan!

The day after Christmas we went skiing with the Fennessey family and Sarah and Greg Louden.  It was a good day up on the mountain.  I skied the lower mountain with Raelyn and my cousin and Ryan, which was great for me, but I was sad I couldn't see the other girls skiing. They had a great day though and it was a good warm up day to our ski season.

The next day the girls wanted to do a bit of shopping with their Christmas money and Raelyn made a big decision to get her ears pierced!  She was super brave and picked out some really cute first earrings. We did some shopping and then headed back to Grandma's for some relaxing.

That evening I ran down to Sarah's house with Raelyn to borrow a few lifejackets in case we needed them for our trip to the hot springs and Raelyn had fun shooting nerf guns with Brinkley around their house.

Here are a few cute pics of my girls from that evening.

The last few years we have been going bowling when we are back in Kalispell and this time was especially fitting since there was not enough snow for sledding or playing outside in the snow for the kids.  We were of course a bit disappointed as we do love to have snow when we are back in town.  There was a bit, just not enough. 

Piper some how always pulls off amazing shots with her ball and ramp and out scored pretty much everyone. We all had fun though.

This is what Olivia does when I try to get a picture

Saturday we headed down to Fairmont Hot Springs.  Once we got settled into our place we headed over to the pools and hot tub with everyone.  I got a couple pictures on the way out that night.

Sunday we headed to ski at Discovery.  The mountain lodge was more crowded than we had seen it before but everyone spread out pretty well on the hills.  We had a great time skiing with the cousins and grandparents.

The kids decided to go down a black diamond that I could stand at the bottom of and watch them come down.  They did such a great job and Grandma Mary looked like a pro!  It was fun to watch.  Discovery is a great little ski area!

Brecken was hilarious flying down the hill.  He would laugh and scream the whole way down.  I thought he was upset but he is just an adrenaline junkie in the making...lol!

Tired kids after an early morning and a day of skiing.

And then we went back to the pool/hot tub that evening. Hard to get pics in the water, but here are a few.

And a cousin picture in front of the tinsel tree!  Seriously I didn't even know they still made tinsel!  LOL!  Always fun to try and get a good picture of 7 kids at the same time.

Monday morning the Chadwicks left bright and early.  And we got up at our leisure and then headed back to my parents house. We left Stella up there and wanted to spend New Year's up there before heading home.

For New Year's Eve we got a new game that we were able to play that night and we watched a movie..."I Can Only Imagine" about Mercy Me's hit song.

New Year's Day we had a prime rib dinner that was super delicious!  Then Hans and I went on an overnight date up to Whitefish.  We don't get to get away very often so it was nice to have an evening all to ourselves.  We had dessert up at a really nice restaurant up there and now I want to go up there sometime for dinner!

And then it was time to pack up and head home again.  In our crammed full car...yep, it was just as full if not fuller heading home!