Christmas Break in Bosque Farms

On the evening of Christmas, we packed up our bags and went down to Bosque Farms to stay the week and enjoy our time with Erin, Kike, grandma and grandpa.  No holiday gathering with the Malarsie family is complete without a little Dr. Mario.  This game has been around a lot of years with our family.  The good times deleting those little pills rolls on.

Kike is not a fan, but did agree to accept Karly's challenge to compete.  ha ha

There was plenty of other technology to go around too.

Don't be fooled though, we spent many hours away from the technology enjoying the beautiful warm December weather.

Erin and Eden were both fully engaged in their Harry Potter books.  

One afternoon, grandma kept the kids and the rest of the adults went out to shoot guns.  It's been a long time since I've done that.  It was a lot of fun.

Erin and Kike get much more practice than Brad and I with skeet shooting.  They would always get what we would leave behind.  That's good teamwork right there.

On another day, we all took a small hike/walk to find some old Petroglyphs on a rock out in the middle of nowhere.  It was such a warm and beautiful day to be out and about.

Look at that big, beautiful blue sky!

Here's the old, ancient writing on the stone.  I wonder what the story is of the people who came through here long ago.

These two cuties were enjoying the expansive view together.

On another day we did a little family history service project and took pictures of the headstones in some small cemetaries around Los Lunas. It was so interesting!

We all had to line up and pick the stickers out of our shoes before we could leave.  Those darn goatheads!

We ended our service project at Dion's for some yummy pizza.

Karly and Bentley snuggled while the rest of us ate.

One evening we were able to get a babysitter for the kids so the adults could go have a date night.  We went to dinner and then went bowling.  It was tons of fun to spend time together.

On our final day together, we went to the Meow Wolf museum in Santa Fe.  Unfortunately the place was packed, but we were still thoroughly intrigued by the strangeness of this place.  Eden loved it and keeps asking to go back.

Olive was pretty exhausted that day and was not enjoying herself there.  She decided pretty early into our time there that she was not going to have fun, so despite all the interesting things to do and see, she just wanted to cry. That made things real fun.

One final and important thing that happened this week was that Erin and Kike announced that they are expecting their first baby!!!  Yay!  I'm so excited for them and can't wait to meet their little baby in July!

On New Year's Eve Erin and Kike had to leave early to go back to Utah, so we decided that we would head back home too.  We were all exhausted so we just went to bed early and basically skipped the New Year's celebrations all together this year. It was such a great week though, and the perfect way to close out 2017. I'm so grateful for this family time and our opportunity to make memories together.  Hopefully next year we can gather a few more of the siblings too.  

Miscellaneous December Pics

Ruby and Eden napping under the Christmas tree.

Olive has the cutest smile.

The kids made Christmas cards and delivered them to several neighbors.  They loved it and brought a lot of smiles to the people around us.

Olive went on another date with daddy - her favorite thing.  They got hot cocoa and cake pops.

Bath Bombs!

Eden got some bath bombs for Christmas and these two were very excited to go try them out.  I sure love these girls.

Christmas Day!

It's Christmas morning!  Brad and I were actually the first ones up, just hanging out in bed waiting for the kids!  ha ha   Before long though, we started to hear movement.  I'm not sure who woke up first, but as soon as one was up, they were all up really quickly!  While I was getting Karly up, these three were trying to peak downstairs to see all the goodies around the tree.

These four Santa babies were so excited!!

Karly's pile from Santa:

Olive's pile from Santa:

Bentley's pile from Santa:

Eden's pile from Santa:

And all the goodies around our beautiful tree!  So magical!

We had so much fun going through stockings and looking through all their surprises from Santa.

They each got a "Fingerling" interactive, robotic monkey, which was the highlight in the stockings this year.

Eden was so excited that she got the microscope she was hoping for.

Bentley was so happy he got a Foosball table, but he did say that he thinks Santa misunderstood that he wanted a big one. ha ha

After eating some delicious french toast casserole (and all the candy in their stockings too), we were ready to open all those presents! 

This stage of life is so magical.  I never wanted this morning to end.  There was so much excitement, laughter and happiness. The presents are still so simple and cute.

These two entertainers - each with a microphone in hand.  We have some good shows in store for us, I'm excited.

Eden was very excited to dig into the science kit and try out some experiments.

That afternoon, we had some company and there were a few more presents to open, and lots of presents to show our visitors.

It was a very fun filled day.  I'm so grateful for this magical time with my family.