A White Mariposa Christmas

Okay, so I'm writing about Christmas in January, but better late than never, right? We had an absolutely amazing trip up to Mariposa, which is a rural little town near Yosemite where my in-laws live. We always go up there to spend Christmas with my husband's family, which is hands down one of Rory's favorite times of the year. Sure he loves that this trip includes tons of Christmas presents (check out the loot he scored below):




but more importantly, he gets to hang out with his two cousins, run around in the woods with a BB gun and eat an endless supply of sugar supplied by his Grandma Judy. Basically, little boy Nirvana. But as awesome as this sounds, something happened this year that made it more awesome - it SNOWED!

Here is a picture of Rory and his cousin Marin outside when the first snowflakes began to fall. Rory had seen snow on the ground once before, but he had never seen it actually coming down. He was in total awe - he kept saying, "I didn't know that snow came from the SKY!"



It didn't take long before it REALLY began to come down, and then it started sticking to the ground. It was freezing out, but Rory refused to come inside, he didn't want to miss a thing!







After a full day and night of snow, we were invited to go to the next town over for some sledding. Now when I was growing up, the good sledding hills were always packed with people. But the bonus of being in the middle of nowhere is that we had this beautiful valley all to ourselves!



Here's Rory on one of his first rides down the hill:



And of course we had to build a snow man!



Needless to say, we were in winter heaven!



As you can probably tell from the pictures, this Christmas was the best we've had yet. What better way to spend the holiday than having fun with family and friends in the snow?! Rory is already counting down the days until next Christmas - I just hope that Grandma Judy and Papa Stan can make it snow again next year!

The Training Wheels Come Off

Today, Hoby got Rory's bike out and realized that Rory had grown so much since summer time (almost TWO WHOLE INCHES!! Yikes!) that he needed to raise the bike seat as far as it could go. "He's almost outgrown his birthday bike already," Hoby said shaking his head "and we haven't even taken the training wheels off yet." We both sort of looked at each other and so I said, "What the heck? Why not try taking them off now?"

So out came the tools - which of course instantly got Rory excited (he's such a BOY!) - and before we knew it, he was ready to jump on and give it shot.





I thought for sure that this would be an all day affair. The two of us would probably be running up and down the street behind Rory's bike for hours, right? I held my breath, preparing myself for what was sure to be some major wipe outs, and hoped I was stocked up on my Superman band-aids. Then before I knew it, they were off!

The first try looked a little something like this:


Okay, not too bad for his first attempt! I was impressed... and I couldn't help saying a quick prayer of thanks that my kid is obviously much more coordinated than I am. Then after a few more tries, he did this:



HOLY COW! Did he just DO that?! ALREADY?!

And just like that, he was off and riding on his own:



Not only are we positively BURSTING with parental pride, but Rory is obviously so totally proud of himself. He has the most amazing smile on his face... his BIG BOY FACE. I don't know exactly when it happened, but suddenly it's very clear that my baby is not a baby anymore... and it kind of takes my breath away.

Way to go, kiddo - we're SO proud of you!