Cousin Camp in Boulder City

We had the best New Year's Day spent with family who were visiting in Boulder City, NV, about 45 minutes southwest of where we live. My brother Devin and his wife Sarah, and their daughters Eva (2) and Sophie (3 months) are staying with Sarah's parents for the next week or so, so Saturday we headed out to spend the day with them! Lucy and Zach were in heaven playing with their little cousins-- especially Eva, and all three hit it right off!

First, Devin, Jon, me, and Sarah's sister Katie decided to do a bike ride up to Hoover Dam, which was about 15 miles away. It was a BEAUTIFUL ride with lots of downhill coasting (my favorite) and the red rocks and blue Lake Mead for scenery.

The trail goes through some old train tunnels which are really cool, the only problem was that it was FREEZING!! I couldn't feel my face or hands about 2 min. into the 30 min. ride, but we still had a good time.

Sarah and her parents met us at the end of the trail with the kids, and let us out to explore Hoover Dam for a bit. We hadn't been yet, and it was definitely impressive!!


View of the water level behind the dam, which is only 43% full-- the white band above the water is how high the water should be right now.


The new bridge that goes across the gorge is an amazing civil engineering feat, but I gotta admit, I can never look down from something like that without thinking about falling, so I was pretty glad to get the kids off!! You can see Jon hanging onto Lucy for dear life.

It was sure nice to check one more thing off our Nevada list of "Things to Do," especially since we had resident tour guides.

Afterwards we went back to Sarah's place to watch the TCU/Wisconsin football game, and Sarah's parents treated us to a delicious steak dinner. What a way to start the New Year off!! Zach and Lucy got to play a little more with the cousins and Sarah's dog Lexi. Anytime I couldn't find Zach, we just had to figure out where the dog had gone and Zachy was usually wrestling or trying to cuddle with the poor thing.

Cuddles with Little Soph!!

Lucy's turn!! This girl is super baby hungry...

Sunday morning Devin and Sarah decided to bless Sophie, so we got to attend and have Jon stand in (and yes, Harry Reid WAS there, but he did NOT stand in the circle).:) He gave a really nice blessing and it was fun to watch the CHAOS unfurl as the cousins tried to "reverently" play with each other.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Winter Fun, Las Vegas-style

Jonathan has had these last two weeks off to recharge the ol' batteries for Round 2 of Jon v. AEGD, and weeks ago he kept pestering...er, reminding me that we HAD to do a "Snow Day" during this vacation time.

Luckily with all the wet weather we've had here in the valley, Mt. Doom (aka Charleston) has been getting a TON of snow. We layered up and headed to higher ground and immediately found snow, snow, and more SNOW!!

We looked EVERYWHERE around here for a sled and couldn't find anything, so deciding to wing it we headed up there anyway. Luckily some nice people loaned us some cardboard (duh!) so we didn't have to keep using our bottoms to slide down the hill.

Rub a dub dub! Three Cardons on some cardboard! There they go!!

The kids LOVED our snow day, and everytime we slid to a stop Zachy would freak out and start crying and say, "Weee! Weeee!" and point up to the top of the mountain. He wanted to slide down again so he could yell "Weeee" some more!

Jonathan had so much fun that his reeeeally nice wife even let him go back up on a solo mission this Friday and test out his new snow shoes for a day.

A few nights later we decided to check out a place called the "Magical Forest" at Opportunity Village, which is a center for people with disabilities. It's basically several acres set up outdoors with TONS of lights, decorations, a choo choo (I asked one of the workers where the "choo choo" was, and he looked at me like I was crazy. "You mean the TRAIN?"), a carousel, and food stands with hot chocolate and other Christmas goodies for sale.

It was SUPER cold that night, but we braved the cold desert winds and the kids obviously loved the horsies on the carousel. Zachy also about had a fit over gettig to ride on the choo choo TRAIN.

All the proceeds go entirely to running Opportunity Village, so they have lots of high school aged kids volunteer and dress up. We even saw the governor of Nevada doing some publicity rounds, but he was't dressed up and this is not him in the costume.

Enjoying the beautiful lights before the freezing rain drove us home!!