The Family "Nieuws": Boyne Mountain, friends & a BIRTHDAY party!

The weekend before Christmas we headed to Boyne Mountain with the Louisells & Aldridges for some skiing, waterpark fun and a little R & R. We were there for 4 days and had such a nice time catching up with our friends and our kids were soooo excited to be with each other. It worked out perfectly at night, our rooms were all close to each other, we'd put the kids to bed and made our own "lounge" down the hall. There we sat with our monitors and chatted the night away. Santa made an "early delivery" to our room and brought Aria a new pair of skis. Kai said he even heard the reindeer that night...ha! We put her and Kai in a ski school for a day. Aria learned to walk in her skis and do the "pizza" & "french fry" and she could make it down the bunny hill by the days end. She laughed and giggled everytime she would get out there and was very amused by her teacher. Kai did a few classes and by the end of the trip, he had moved to a level 5! Way to go Kai! He's now on his own-chair lifts and all. Little Becket wanted to go soooo bad. And if it were up to me, I would have rented him some skis and put him in a class too. But instead, on ski day, he spent a few hrs in the daycare with his buddies and enjoyed playing at the bottom of the hill making snowballs and throwing them at Mommy! Luke & I (along with our friends) enjoyed the "green" runs (I'm such a chicken skier!) and had fun together. We also spent a few days at Avalanche Bay waterpark right there. Oh my goodness, did the kids love that place. Kai was all about the largest, massive water slides and even though he was too short to ride by himself, he convinced his tall buddies to go with him and they let them! Becket rode all the slides with daddy and was underwater most of the day. Aria and Mommy enjoyed the hot tubs and lazy river(-: There are so many activities to do there, that we just couldn't possibly fit everything in in 4 days, but we sure did try.

Kai and his girlfriend, Kennedy

We went to Storytime at the lodge one night and Fritz the dog joined. Becket was completely in love with him and sat there through the whole story- barking orders such as "Sssshhh, be quiet Fritz" and "Doggy goes whoof whoof" He was a hoot.

The best I could do to contain the 3 of them for ONE photo for 1.2 seconds

Dylan & Kai rode the "toilet bowl" water slide over and over. I went on it once and about lost my suit. It was CRAZY fast.

The kiddies in the lounge watching a movie and eating a late dinner after a full day

Santa's early delivery to Aria!

Chatting it up with her instructor. She was a young girl and laughed at everything Aria told her.

SO proud to have her own skis.

She met a new friend in class named Emily.

Go Aria, Go!

Walking in these boots ain't easy

Hahaha, another snowball about to hit Mommy!

He loved to bomb right down the bunny hill going full force. Mom, this hill is such a cinch. Maybe a little too confident?

Magic Carpet ride was awesome. No burnt out gloves for this trip!

We also celebrated a special little guys 6th Birthday! Can you even believe it!? Our baby boy is 6! He had been planning his party for months (he wanted a ski party) but I quickly realized that most of his ski buddies were going to be gone over NYE. So duh! We celebrated at Boyne since some of his friends were already going to be there and of course there was skiing(-: We all hit the waterpark and had pizza right at Boyne. His cake was a hoot and a whirlwind of events, but the end result was cute. Since this party was a last minute idea, we had to make it simple. He wanted a skier cake. No go at Costco, Sams or any place remotely convenient. So I thought, maybe I could order Costco cupcakes and stick little skier figures on them. Nope, no skier figurines anywhere. Costco no longer makes cupcakes. Hmmmm....Told him he needed to pick out another theme. He landed on pirates. Got treasure chests, he filled each one accordingly. We grabbed some pirate map plates and pirate candles. He chose a luscious LARGE chocolate fudge cake from Costco and informed me that he wanted to design it himself. Ha! Who does this sound like? When you cant find something, you just make it up...on the fly. We left Costco with a blank cake and he exclaimed "this is going to be the best birthday cake ever" Well, Daddy took over and came up with a map themed cake. There were 5 pirate themed candles and 1 treasure chest candle. We buried the treasure chest, covered the cake with "sand", marked an "X" at the treasure and lit each candle after a series of questions, which those clues led you to the next candle. In the end, only 5 candles were lit, but Kai was turning 6. SO they guessed that they needed to find the treasure and Kai dug for it and found it. We lit the hidden candle and we rang in his 1st 6th Birthday(-: We were so blessed to be with our great friends and Kai was just elated with it all. Happy Birthday Kaias! We love you!