North Pole Experience

For Christmas, Grammy and Papa took us all to the NPX in Flagstaff!

We almost didn't make it.

Rusty was throwing up the day before.

I just knew another kid would be barfing the next day.

Prayers and luck must have been in our favor because we were barf free

on departure day!

We took the trolley to Santa's workshop.

I couldn't stop laughing at our drivers portal goggles!!

These "elves" sure stayed true to character!

Even when I asked one where a good place to eat was.

Her response was Mrs. Claus bakery has excellent snowman soup.

Eye roll.

I'm pretty sure the workshop was all employed by NAU students.

I

Before you could enter you had to knock on the door while chanting some

secret saying.

You stay in your group and rotate through "stations" I guess to put it.

First we helped Santa build toys.

We had snowman soup (hot chocolate) and cookies in Mrs. Claus kitchen.

We went to Elf University

There were a few more.

At the end we got to meet Santa!

It was comical getting our huge group in one picture!

These shirts Grammy designed made the experience really fun!

In fact, my boys still wear theirs to school...in February:)

She is such a fan!!

We took the trolley back to the hotel where we debated on where to eat dinner!

Its not easy to accommodate 30 people with wild children.

We ended up at a pretty good Mexican place.

We were basically in our own little space that had a stage.

Ya, there was nothing quiet about us!

The next morning we all ate at the hotel breakfast buffet.

It was Charlottes birthday and Valerie announced that she was pregnant!

I had a hunch. Poor thing looked green the whole trip.

Come to find out, Sunni was pregnant but didn't announce until 6 weeks later!

I guess when you aren't barfing you can hide it longer!

So their babies will be 2 weeks apart.

So fun!

Most of everybody trickled on home after breakfast.

We didn't have anywhere to be so we went to the deer farm with the Hathcocks and Goodmans!

Lindi wanted NOTHING to do with those deer!

The girl has a fierce fear of all things on 4 legs!

It was such a fun getaway with family!

 We feel blessed to have such wonderful parents and grandparents in our lives

that value the importance of family bonding.

It also was a great way to kick of the Christmas season!