Our Annual Snow trip: Mammoth

This was our longest road trip to date! 5 hours in the car with the kids and they did pretty good:) We stopped at an awesome cafe on the way there with lovely craft beer for mommy and daddy.  The beautiful part about the timing of our vacation is we went mid-week so we had no traffic, no lines at restaurants or at the slopes.  In fact, we sent Phia and Preston to ski school and while it was insanely expensive we scored with private lessons since there was no one on the mountain!!  We loved our resort and our condo was perfect for our family:) The views from all the bedrooms and balcony were breathtaking.  Preston and Bentley both referred to skiing as "skeeting" and we didn't correct them.  Ski school was attached to our resort as well as a lodge with a restaurant and full bar so mommy and daddy kept plenty busy while the older ones were learning to ski.  They both did AWESOME!!! Phia preferred going down "pizza" style with her legs pointed toward each other and this is a shocker...but Preston preferred "french fry" style....ski's pointing straight down the mountain.  We're learning more and more that our Phia is a perfectionist and it was very evident in her skiing style!  Our second day Phia and Presto both wanted to ski again but we decided to take a gondola ride to the Main Lodge for some hot chocolate with the whole family followed by some sledding! Preston was a HUGE fan of sledding(mommy nearly had a heart attack), Phia's nose got busted open and Bentley ended up with a bloody lip and cheek.  Dangerous stuff...who knew?  I pinch myself thinking how lucky I am to make all these amazing memories as a family.  Each moment(even the craziest ones) are all amazing.  We seriously have the coolest kiddos:)!!

A quick wine country trip...

We do not take advantage of our proximity to wine country nearly enough...we must have a lot of kids or something! We've been to Solvang a few times with the kids and always love heading up there but this time we spent more time in Los Olivos and we fell in love with the area all over again.  We got up there in an hour and 40 minutes...easy peasy! Our first day we met up with some friends and they introduced us to wine and cupcake tasting...say what? The kids loved exploring the field next door and the boys especially loved throwing rocks...yes...they're boys!  We enjoyed many wine tastings and then we all headed off to the castle park for some late afternoon fun.  We've been to this park many times but never seen it this crowded...woah!! Our family is so big that we now get 2 rooms when we stay at hotels and it works perfectly!  The next morning we had an awesome breakfast at the hotel and headed out to and ostrich farm where the kids were able to feed these (odd) animals and run around.  Our next stop was Zaca Mesa Winery for some more wine tasting and then we headed home! Such a fun trip and we decided we're going to do this a lot more often since it's so close.  Thankfully we had amazing tour guides to show us around...can't wait to explore even more the next time!