Christmast in Bear Lake: kids' play

In the weeks and months before Christmas, my mom whined and complained about not having any 'grandma toys' at her cabin for her 7 young grandchildren to play with. She fretted about it and begged each of her children that have kids to donate any old toys to the cause. She also said that all she wanted for Christmas was toys for her grandkids. So, being the dutiful daughter that I am, I sorted through all of my toys, decided which ones the kids could probably do without, and compiled a meager collection (it filled one grocery bag) to offer to my poor, stressed out mom. Upon arriving at the cabin, I discovered this:

The Great Wall of Toys! This picture doesn't do it justice... many of the toys were already scattered across the house. Before leaving their Pheonix home, my parents went shopping and purchased every toy, game, and dress-up outfit they could fit in their car (apparently they filled every square inch of it). The kids never lacked for fun toys to play with. Hah! Poor, toyless Grandma, my foot! Harumph.

Among the favorite toys were the marshmallow gun (obviously Grandpa's idea)...

... and the rocking horse:

Savannah and Sienna created a rocking horse / baby stroller train that they repeatedly dragged across the soft-yet-slippery laminated cork floors. I lost count of the number of times I had that long spiral phone cord tangled around my legs:

JT never felt so pretty as when he was dressed up as a butterfly (his dad would kill me if he saw this picture posted on my blog :D):

All of the kids enjoyed playing their own version of pool with Grandpa:

There was always much fun to be had on the love sacs:

Including the static hair that comes with it:

And there many other toys that they all enjoyed playing with:

There was even fun to be had on props that weren't intended to be toys:

to be continued....