White New Year's

We didn't have a white Christmas, but we did have a white New Year's -- not terribly hard to accomplish when you go to the mountains, of course.

Fun part first, here are some pictures:

Benjamin practicing with the sled

Noah hanging out in the condo

Benjamin does not like looking at the camera these days - we've got to get one that takes pictures more quickly to capture the millisecond he looks at the camera.

Benjamin, Noah and me

Benjamin and Noah sitting in the sled

Benjamin trying to kick snow on Frédéric

Now for the real story: Remind me not to try this again for at least 5 years. Two adults and two children in 270 square feet, when neither wants to sleep and each wakes the other up... not fun. Oh wait, this won't be better in five years, will it?! Remind me not to try this again until we get a condo with a few bedrooms. Between Noah randomly crying for a minute at a time throughout the night, Benjamin not wanting to fall asleep for hours and then waking up to ask for a drink of water (I think we should bring the humidifier with us next time, it was very dry up there), and Frédéric snoring, I did not get much sleep this week!

We've been talking up skiing for a while with Benjamin - reading Curious George books about snow, telling him about ski boots, skis, and a helmet, and showing him pictures from previous trips. So he thought he wanted to go skiing until we got into the ski shop and had him try on the ski boots. He let the man put them on his feet but then refused to walk around in them to see if they fit properly. After much ineffective cajoling and bribery (attempted because we think he would like it if he tried it), we gave up and he stuck to sledding this year.

And here is one more picture - we changed out the Carribean-looking comforters and cushion covers for some more mountainy-looking ones that my mom made up for us with fabric we got in the Alps back in July. We think it looks much warmer and more inviting for the winter with the red colors than it did with blues, greens and yellows.