We were ready to drop...

Joe and I offered to take our nieces (11 and 9) and nephew (3) for the day so my brother and sister-in-law could finish up their Christmas shopping this past Saturday. We had the kids from about 8:30am until 6:30pm. We started the day at a freeway opening...I know, it sounds kinda weird, but we celebrate freeway openings around here. Actually, it's a big family event with tons of booths handing out freebies and they bring in those giant jumping things for the kids. This time they brought in snow, since we don't see much of that around here, for the kids to play in.
After that, we took the kids to lunch at Applebees then back to our place for hot cocoa and cookies. By the time we finished up with that and fed the dogs, it was time to head off to the evening we had planned. We went out to a great upscale, outdoor shopping area not too far away that has a great feel during the holidays. They have Santa, carolers, and carriage rides in the center square.

The kids got to visit with Santa


then we did some shopping and got in line for the carriage rides.


I managed to get this great photo of the kids while we were there, to bad it was too late for the Christmas card photo.



By the time we got home that night, Joe and I just dropped from exhaustion! I kept asking him on the way home if he really thought we could keep up with Lauren. We sure had a hard time keeping up with our nephew...I kept looking for the "off" switch, but just couldn't find it! Also, we had a little scare at the freeway opening when we lost sight of him for about 30 seconds, which felt like 10 minutes of pure terror. He was literally there one second and gone the next...turned out he decided to go into one of those giant, blow-up jumping things all by himself. We found him in there just happily jumping away. Meanwhile, I thought I was going to have a heart attack....how do you parents deal with this? We were watching him like a hawk and he still managed to slip away from us.