New Year's Fun in the Snow

Living on one income in San Francisco is a tricky business, made trickier with four kids, and especially when that one income is a teacher's salary.  But, because of Matt's teaching schedule, we have a lot of family time together.  It's a trade-off that I'm happy with at this point in our girls' lives.  We make a lot of sacrifices and have to really watch our money, which means that really fancy vacations are in the distant past and maybe in the distant future. But, while we may not be able to go to Hawaii every year, we can do Tahoe!  We have my family's cabin that we're lucky to be able to use, so a Tahoe vacation is a pretty affordable vacation, both in the summer and winter, and we hadn't taken the girls to the snow in a few years.  In fact, Tessa and Annie had never been in the snow.  With Matt's three weeks of Christmas vacation this year, we had plenty of time to squeeze in a trip, and we jumped at the chance to spend a week up there after Christmas.

The first hurdle was packing for the week.  Ugh.  Tessa and Annie were very helpful in this process.

The second hurdle we faced was getting there, in the snow, with the possibility of needing chains.  Luckily, we made it through the drive without needing chains, and, once there, we settled in for the week.  We went grocery shopping the next morning, which was very handy since a major storm hit Tahoe the next night.  Our power was out for over 12 hours and we were totally snowed in.  We woke up to more than two new feet of snow, and, without power, no cartooons for the kids!!  Our neighbors came through with some entertainment, though.  They live there full time, and have to (gasp!!) work. Watching them snow-blow their driveway before leaving for work at 7am in a snowstorm provided a diversion for the girls, but truly shattered any fantasy I had built up in my head of an idyllic day-to-day life in a wintery climate.  I was suddenly very grateful for our mild weather!

Once we all decided to brave this snow ourselves, the girls had a lot of fun accessorizing, especially Bridget.

Do you think Tessa has any dimples??

These three were quite happy with their attire, which includes a lot of hand-me-downs from our Mason cousins.  We are so lucky that their girls are all a little older than our girls, and grateful that they've unloaded a lot of their snow clothes, boots, and even skis on us. 

Well, most of us were happy.  The outfit that fit Megan best happened to be blue.  Horror of all horrors!  She felt pretty picked on that she wasn't pretty in pink. I think this one may have been cousin Zach's outfit (her on-again, off-again husband), but that didn't make it any better, or any pinker.

Once out in the snow, though, and especially on the sled hill that Daddy slaved over to perfect, everyone was happy...

for about thirty minutes.  Time to head back inside again.

And, while it may appear that we spent a lot of time in the snow, the kids were more often amusing themselves indoors.  But, we made a big mistake in not bringing any toys with us!  What were we thinking?!  So, they created games for themselves, including one where they spent a lot of time in an upstairs closet that has two doors (read: so fun for the four and under set): 

Luckily, in addition to the closet, we also had Matt's laptop and iPad, and they are are quite comfortable using both:

We had such a nice time!  We're looking forward to many, many more trips like these with the girls, especially as they get older.