Post-Christmas in Boise

Like I said in my last post, our family trip for Johnson Christmas in Boise began about 5 hours after our trip to San Diego ended. the kids had a fair amount of sleep that night, albeit interrupted many times, and Alex had rest at home, so we were good to go. I was hoping to get a nap in during the 5 1/2 hour car ride, but with 6 kids that was wishful thinking :). Anyway, we started out the trip with some errands to the gas station and Les Schwab to get tires, and we grabbed McDonald's on the way out of town. I love this picture of the kids when I reminded them we were going to Boise to see their cousins. They were all wearing their game stickers, and hadn't eaten a vegetable for more than a day, but ketchup counts right?! :) We were just excited to get on the road,

We made it through the drive with only one stop. Actually, I have made this drive now three times, and have only had to stop once each time. Our kids do SO well on road trips. We have conditioned them early, and have done 5+ hour road trips at least a few times a year since they were born. In fact, this is Hunter's 7th driving day or more than 5 hours, and he is only 7 months old!

During our gas and bathroom stop, Hunter got to try his first root beer float! It was an exciting moment for him, and he was much more interested in that and the fry he was sucking on than nursing, so he had a very healthy lunch.

We got to Amber's house right at dinner time, and it was awesome to just jump into the craziness. It was great to see Tasha, and Hunter especially enjoyed meeting his aunt. Here he is sucking on her face in his special hello.

I honestly don't remember much about that first night (I was going on 2 days without a bit of sleep) and for once I am blogging about this before my sister, who always has all the stories (and a fair number of pictures that I am sure to steal later). So we are just going to have to go with the pictures that I do have.

The next morning we had our traditional iPad duet playing. This began because it's expensive and impractical to print a bunch of duets you only want to play once (and pretty horribly at that). Now we line up all of our electronics (each one on a different page) and play through them. The secret to it is knowing how many pages you need to go forward and not letting the iPads time out. Mostly we just bluff and laugh our way through demolishing as many great duets as we can find for free online :).

After playing through the morning, I got to go with my mom to see my newest neice, Emma. She was born on Christmas, quite a few weeks early, and was spending some time getting bigger in the NICU at St. Luke's. She was a total sweetheart, I can't wait to visit as she gets older, and the kids can't wait to meet her next time!

While I helped my mom bring Kylie and Justin up to visit their mom, the rest of the people went sledding. The kids were SO excited to sled with their cousins, and I was happy to take the pictures :)

Makenzie went once with me as a pity trip, but she really just wanted to sled with Amber, over and over and over again. She was attached to Amber at the hip for most of the trip, and still, over a month later, asks if we are driving to Amber's house at least once a day when we get into the car. For the first three weeks after we got home it was at least 15 times a day that Makenzie would insist we were going to Amber's house, then become inconsolable when she finally believed me that we weren't going for a few months. After I distracted her with a treat or book or activity, she would be happy for about 15 minutes before we started the entire process over again. It was completely exhausting, but I secretly loved it because I feel the same way. I can't wait for another trip to Boise, and for the eventuality that Amber and I will live close to each other again.

Carter kept just zipping past me in this sled...he loved how fast it would go :).

That evening was Christmas with the Johnsons :). It was a loud, crazy party, as per usual. This is the only picture I even took of all the kids lined up, ready for Grandpa to hand them a gift.

Someday, when I get my act together, I will put up video of this amazing moment. Teag got a volcano for Christmas, and had built and painted it in preparation to make it explode. He was over the moon excited, yelling and dancing 'It's going to explode, it's going to explode, I'm going to explode!'. It was the most honest thing anyone said that day.

The next morning our men got to working building robots from Grandma. Carter's is a little crab and Teag's is a tin can. The crab crawls all over any surface, but when it gets to a barrier or edge, it turns so it never falls off. Carter has spent hours building mazes and barriers trying to get that thing to crawl off the table, but he hasn't been successful yet :)

That day was especially cold, so we decided to hit the movie theater. Grandma and Grandpa took all the kids (and their parents :)) to see Moana. It was a great movie, with music that we heard for the remainder of the trip

No movie is complete without a post-movie treat, so we ran next door to the frozen yogurt place (it was SO cold we were actually running) for a cold treat. We probably made their profits for the day, it was pretty empty before and after us.

Here's another cute one of Kenzie and her Auntie Amber. I love it :)

Our week went really fast, going between trying to be kids and trying to take care of our kids. I wanted to make sure to see Emma one more time before we left, because she's sure to be a mover and shaker before we see her again. She is just the sweetest baby.

New Years is a wild affair at the Grovers with 10 kids :). We celebrated at 9 PM, which in Boise is even earlier than the New York celebration, so we googled some fireworks from Australia (I think) and let the kids watch the countdown when we wanted. I'm pretty sure Amber's older kids played up the excitement for the benefit of their younger cousins, which was perfect for everyone. We grabbed all the pots and spaghetti spoons we could find and went outside to cause a ruckus.

These two were trying SO hard to pull their own poppers, but it just wasn't happening. Next year, 6 year olds!

I'm pretty sure all of my kids were asleep before I left the room that night, and the grownups stayed up to play games and hang out until we crashed as well. I feel like the months and months of lack of sleep is catching up to me, the days and nights all blur together. I couldn't believe it when we figured out that we only had one day left. The kids realized that this might be their last chance to perform their dance routine from Moana that they had been working on all week. Elli was quite serious about the routine, and drilled it into their heads as much as she could. I think they performed excellently, and I especially love the shot of Elli playing up the emotions to show everyone else what to do :).

I only had one day to get all my shopping done before returning to the world of no stores, so Kenzie and I took a trip to Target. She didn't even make it to the store before she was out cold...

Monday morning, after 12 days on the road in 3 different states, we loaded up the car one more time and drove home. The coolest part of the long drive home was these cool icicles that grew on the side of our car. The kids were pretty tired, and very ready to sleep in their own beds, so it was a long drive, but we made it without too much snow on the road, and were very happy to see our house that evening.