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Grandpa came up to Vienna to celebrate Christmas with us. Parker got an electric scooter that proved to be super fun and fast! Grandpa put his skills to work to help put it together. Skylar wanted lots of smaller gifts including items related to crocheting.

And daddy enjoyed finally getting the surf/skate that he ordered two years ago on kickstarter for the kids. It’s a fun toy, but probably 2 years too late for the kids to enjoy. Lesson learned.

We flew to Dallas Texas and then drove 2 hours to Waco to attend Waco Surf – a small resort with a wave pool for surfing, a cable pull for wake boarding, and a massive slide that shot people 30 feet in the air.

I found the opportunity where I’ve found all my most recent awesome vacations – on Instagram ads! I was looking for a massive slide and Waco Surf has the only one in the US that is open to the public and my guess is that some accident will probably shut it down in the near future 🙁

We surfed – it was hard, but Skylar managed to figure out the intermediate session better than any of us. Parker had good success with the beginner session – he figured out how to ‘pump’ his board and got some good rides.

Everyone left Waco a little bit battered and bruised, but it was a super fun trip. Parker said the highlight was the surfing, while Skylar’s favorite moment was staying up until 3am when we had to depart Sunday morning and wandering around the property with Parker – checking out the stars and the hot tub after hours.

The kids filmed a thank you video for their teacher, Mrs. Fish:

We went to Breckenridge with the Crabs (Ryan, Rita, Paul, and Arri) and the Wilkenfelds (John, Hillary, Abby, and Rebecca). Each day we fell into a routine of breakfast, ski, lunch, hot tub, dinner, and then games or a trip for Skylar and I to town to do some retail recovery / therapy. We found a Lululemon (Skylar’s fav at the time), gelato with an Instagram wall, and freeze dried candy.

Parker walked from the hot tub back to our unit, which was probably 50 yards, with no shirt and no shoes in the snow. Something’s wrong with that boys internal temperature. He’ll be the only survivor when the ship goes down in the Artic!

On our way back we got stuck at the airport for an hour while we waited on our luggage to appear, so we found a display and took some pics. Great trip once again!

We had a beautiful Sunday afternoon in November where we went for a hike with the Wilkenfeld’s. After the hike we (minus Parker who sat in the car) played a round of keep away with a kick ball that I had brought.

Ellie accompanied us for a bike ride at Fountainhead regional park. There are some really aggressive mountain biking trails and I didn’t realize just how hard they would be. Kinda out of range for kids, but we did find another path that was 15 miles long and a nice difficulty level for everyone involved.

Obviously we did not go the full 15 miles, but we did have fun. Skylar’s bike needed to have the handle bars raised and in doing so it pulled the brake line too tight, such that right turns caused the rear brake to lock up. That’s Walmart quality right there!

We decided that surfing would be our new fall sport / family activity. Our first trip to va beach didn’t start off the smoothest, as Skylar fell in the water within 20 minutes of getting to the beach and she set her mood board appropriately. Skylar was also not a fan or our hotel, which was a Howard Johnson with concrete painted walls and our lock didn’t work so we got moved to a new room. The clientele was also not of the highest caliber. I may have also clogged the sink with Ramen noodles – oops!

After warming up and getting some food, Skylar changed the mood board. The surfing was fun and the water was warm. We didn’t really spend anytime at our lovely motel. Skylar and I also got up early the last morning to go see the sunrise on the beach. All in all a successful trip!