Christmas 2010 in Portland

Angela's favorite time of the year - the Christmas season.

One Sunday afternoon we helped our boys make some graham cracker "gingerbread" houses. This was a tradition in Brian's childhood. Lucas' first design fell apart once he loaded up the roof with candy. So then we redesigned his house and this one stood. The boys never did eat it, though Lucas would eat some of the candies here and there. Pretty cool houses though.

Angela's grandparents, Afton and Doral, had their great grandchildren over one morning for a Christmas party. So Angela took Lucas and Travis over for that.
Christmas time also means the first snows of the year. A week before Christmas we got a bunch of snow and so Brian made a snowman (on the left) and Travis and Lucas made another (on the right). Then a day or two later it started raining all day. So Brian got out some rain coats for our snowmen to save them from melting. They ended up looking like ghosts!

Another day we made cornflake wreathes, another Anderson family tradition. They are rice crispie treats with corn flakes substituted and you add green food coloring and shape them into wreathes. Travis decided he wasn't interested so Marcus and Lucas had fun with them.

Then a day before we left to drive up to Portland for Christmas, we had aunt Marci come over so that we could open gifts from Brian's family (to save room in our packed van). So the kids got to enjoy two Christmases in effect. They were a bit sad to leave those new toys behind.

We then left at 4 am the next morning to get an early start on our long drive to Angela's parents house. We made it there quite quickly, despite the snowy conditions as we left Utah. One of the big hits while we were in Portland was Grandpa Jack's train set! Travis just loved to drive that train back and forth and pick up the cars. Marcus wanted to grad it but he'd get nervous every time it'd move.

On a couple occasions Brian took Travis and Lucas out geocaching in the area. At one of the caches we saw some animals guarding the cache site. This cache was cleverly disguised.

We even got the chance to get in the hot tub, and once was all we could take! It was lots of fun being in it and Brian and the boys must have stayed in for nearly 2 hours. It was the getting out part that was definetly not so fun since the temperatures were in the upper 30s or low 40s.

On Christmas morning, Marcus got up first and got the chance to enjoy his gift from Santa before his brothers could interferre. He likes his new bike, though it may not be till summer time before he can ride it on his own (which is just fine since the snow won't be gone for a while yet).

Then Lucas got up before Travis and came down to joy in getting a rollie pollie playground and remote control firetruck.

Finally Brian couldn't wait anymore and went and woke Travis up (at like 8 am). He happily discovered his pair of remote control helicopters and cool set of legos to build various machines with.

While we were there we went to OMSI in downtown Portland. We were there 5.5 hours and still maybe only got through 3/4 of it, and that required us hurrying through the 3/4 we saw. Here's aunt Heather and Grandma Diane helping Lucas make some goo.

And here's Lucas and Travis enjoying the water area with bibs that sort of kept them dry.

All three boys got matching PJs and once we got back home we dressed them all up for a photo. Marcus' PJs may be a bit too big still but it made for a cute photo.

While we were trying to get a photo taken, this was a common sight. I guess boys will be boys...