We started our Valentine's festivities off the day before, first with a very sad-looking rose that the receptionist at Cat's orthodontist's office gave me after her appointment. (Side note: she's almost done with braces!!)
That afternoon was pretty crazy because Jack and Eliza had to make their Valentine boxes in the afternoon (they could have done them earlier, but it seems like every other day is crazy too....) and then all the big kids performed in a piano recital that night. (More on the recital later.)
I did my usual little bit of decorating for the kids to wake up to, with a Rice Krispies kiss for each of them, a little Valentine from me, and some candy. Then I finished off the sugary morning with heart-shaped waffles, pink whipped cream, strawberries, and heart-shaped bacon. Because nothing says love like fatty slices of a pig's belly shaped like a heart.
The younger kids had Valentine parties at school and came home with a few bits of candy and plenty of empty wrappers.
The rest of the day included piano practice, homework catch-up, a cousin playdate at the park, gymnastics for Eliza, frozen pizza and a movie for the other kids, and dinner at Chick-Fil-A for Ben and me. It was a good, festive-yet-low-key kind of day with people we love!
On Sunday of Valentine's Day weekend we had our customary fondue dinner and dancing, inviting some friends to join us. My adult cousin and his wife came, and our friend Tony brought his wife, baby, and little brother. When dinner and dancing were over we also put the young couples on the spot with a little bit of the Newlywed Game, which was fun too.
Cat taught us the dance for The Git Up - so fun!
Eliza, Cat and I loved having a little time to snuggle Liliana!
Monday, January 20th (MLK Day)
- This was our second time going to Sundance as a family, this time with some knowledge and experience!
- Cat practiced at the tow rope, hanging out with Ben and Luke while I had the middle two on the lift. Then Ben took the older 3 on the lift and I hung out with Luke.
- Luke was pretty bored with the tow rope after a while, so much that he resorted to playing in the deep snow on the edge of the run below the tow area.
Friday, January 24th
- I finally did what I should have done from the beginning of Ski School: I had the van loaded up with all the gear and the clothes the kids would need, plus a fresh Little Caesers pizza, when I picked the kids up from school. We arrived at Sundance earlier than ever, we weren't rushed, and we arrived at the check-in spot early. Awesome.
- As we were driving up, we saw emergency vehicles on the side of the road and a car in the river. We found out when we pulled into the parking area that right after we arrived, they would be closing down the road so they could bring wreckers to bring in the multiple cars that had gone into the river. The road would be closed for a couple of hours.
- This meant that ski school was cancelled that day, since we were early and everyone else who was on time wouldn't be able to get up to the resort. It worked out for us - I had planned to stay and ski anyway, so I had all my gear and I just skied with Jack and Eliza the whole time.
- Luke had his second lesson and did so well that afterward there was even talk of Ski Team (not for this year, but maybe next year)
- Before his lesson started, he made a snowball and put it in a plastic bag in the ski instructors' yurt. He was told that it was magic and if he was good for his teacher, something special would happen. Sure enough, when he went back to the yurt after his lesson, he found his snowball but when he broke it up, there was a toy car inside.
- It was fun for Jack, Eliza, and me to run into Luke and his teacher periodically and say hi, to see Luke skiing or taking a break and making a snowman.
- Luke carried his own equipment back to the car when we were finished, after a lot of waiting for him to decide to do it. He's carried it ever since.
Friday, January 31st
- After Luke's boredom with the tow rope, and now with two lessons under his belt, we decided to bite the bullet and get him his own season lift pass. I hated that I hadn't done it at the pre-season prices when we'd bought passes for everyone else, but when I talked to the ticket office they said they'd be happy to honor the pre-season price for us. Hooray!
- Cat had her first lesson and did great!
- I had my first real ski experience with Luke on the mountain and he was super confident and fast! At one point I thought I communicated that I would meet him at the bottom of the Outlaw Trail but when I got there and didn't see him, I looked down the mountain and he was just skiing away. I quickly went to try to catch up with him, but I couldn't, and I didn't want to yell for him to stop and distract him and risk him falling down, so I just followed him the best I could. At one point he started to lose his balance and bent his knees like he was going to go down but then he just straightened his legs and kept going. I couldn't believe it! He did look around periodically to see if I was nearby, but he kept going until he got to the bottom - when a run-in with a ski rack ended his spree. (Something similar happened when he went skiing with Ben a few days later, so we knew that stopping was the next thing for Luke to work on.)
- Luke got used to taking a break when he was having his lesson the week before, so I did the same thing with him, making little powdery snowmen, and he did snow angels too.
- Day Three of Ski School for J and E was a success, until Jack got so frustrated and worked up that his teacher brought him to the yurt to try to calm down. I happened to be right there with Luke, so we all hung out together for a bit. Jack managed to calm down, but though we hoped he could meet up with his teacher for one more run before the lesson time was over, we ran out of time and Jack didn't get to ski anymore. He was really disappointed, but hopefully learned from the experience.
Friday, February 7th
- Eliza had to miss the last day of Ski School because of her hurt knee.
- Their poor teacher had a huge group of kids at first (12!) but relief arrived and the class divided up after a little while.
- The teacher knew that getting turned around and having to ski backward was one of the things Jack was most scared about, so he taught him how to ski backward!
- He also told us that he'd love to ski with the kids on his own some time and gave me his number so we can try to coordinate.
- Luke had his 3rd (and last) lesson, with the same teacher as last time. I asked that they work on stopping, which they did. Luke told me afterward that he skied in the "enchanted snow" under the trees. Too cool.
- I skied on my own while the boys were having their lessons, and stopped to make a video of my favorite view so far.
Can you find Jack? He's 3rd from the back in this picture.
At gymnastics on Tuesday night, February 4th, Eliza was doing a front handspring on the floor and planted her foot between mats, jarring her left knee, then she landed badly and hyperextended the same knee. She was in tears from the pain, and we got a call asking us to pick her up early. When Ben arrived to bring Eliza home she adamantly asked to be allowed to stay for bars (her favorite event). Ben brought her home.
We were worried about her having to put any weight at all on her knee, even using crutches, so we kept her home from school the rest of the week. She hopped around here and there but mostly rested on Wednesday and Thursday. She played Solitaire, read, watched some TV, and kept me company while I ran some errands.
I picked up some crutches on Friday morning and allowed her to practice moving around over the weekend, and she brought the crutches to school on Monday. She thought she didn't need the crutches on Tuesday, but I encouraged her to use them anyway.
By Tuesday night Eliza was insistent that she was able to go to gymnastics, so I let her go, as long as she promised to take it easy and let her pain be her guide. She reported afterward that she did take it easy and even stopped when she felt pain, which was only after running. She was back at gymnastics the next night, and made up the day she missed the previous week by attending Friday, then competed at a meet on Saturday. She didn't do as well as she would have liked to after the injury and brief recovery, but we're all glad that she's better and moving like normal again!
My birthday was on a Monday, so the celebrating was pretty minimal. There was a winter storm scare, though, so the kids were some of the few at school that day and their teachers didn't assign homework, which meant a free night at home! So after piano lessons and dinner we had a family movie night (a real treat, since we usually don't allow screen time during the week) watching the Lindsay Lohan Freaky Friday, which we all loved! Then we enjoyed the yummy birthday cake Cat made me (which, acutally, she'd made a day earlier and we decided to enjoy it two nights in a row, which was just fine with me!) and opened presents, and it was a really nice night.
I love this wire sculpture Eliza made for me!
Jack wrote me the sweetest note and I love it so much.
We had a bigger celebration the following weekend with a family night out - first we had dinner at our local Thai place, then we saw The MozART Group at the Covey Center in Provo. I was really excited to take the kids to see this classical string quartet with a comedic twist (think Victor Borge), and I assumed they'd like it but the boys were so upset about having to go that I started to worry that I'd made a mistake. Well, I needn't have worried. Everyone had a great time and laughed and laughed (even though I know the kids, especially the younger 3, didn't get all of the jokes... though in all honesty there were also probably things I missed because I'm not as big a music nerd as others).
It was a great night!
Cat: "Mom! You are NOT taking a cheap selfie!" Me: "Yes I am. Smile."
Here are some of our favorite sketches from the performances, via the group's YouTube page:
The Come, Follow Me curriculum from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is wonderful. And I love that everyone in the Church is studying the same thing throughout the year: in church classes for all ages, in seminary, and at home.
I'd like to say that our Come, Follow Me lessons at home are exemplary. They're not. Sometimes they are really focused and thought-provoking, but other times they're as brief as reading a verse and sharing a thought about it, or as simple as watching a Book of Mormon video. And there are days when it doesn't happen at all, though we do try to start our days on a spiritual note on weekdays, and have a formalish lesson on Sundays.
Of course, our weekday mornings are busy. Trying to get 4 kids and at least 1 parent groomed, fed, and prepped by 7:50 is a challenge just about every day. It's loud and hectic and there's no telling who will be in a bad mood at any given moment. So our morning CFM lessons (using the term very loosely) are often crazy. And since we are... we'll say... a fun-loving family, our longer Sunday lessons tend to unravel pretty quickly, if they were ever ravelled to begin with.
So it dawned on me the other day that CFM probably more appropriately stands for Chaotic Family Moments at our house: Chaotic Family Moments with scriptural themes running through them and ending with a prayer. Hopefully we're creating positive memories, and the efforts will pay off in greater understanding for all of us, however incremental the improvement might be.
Acting out Part 1 of Getting the Brass Plates from Laban before school
After learning about Nephi building a boat, each kid had 10 minutes to build his/her
own boat. Cat was done in 30 seconds, taping a plastic IKEA cup to a plastic
IKEA plate, and her boat worked perfectly. The other kids took more time.
Eliza created her boat mostly using aluminum foil and Gorilla tape. Luke got
some help and advice from Ben for his LEGO boat. They taped an air-filled
zip-top bag to the bottom to make the boat float.
And then this happened.
Since we shifted to morning CFM time we aren't doing the family scripture study we used to do at bedtime. This has opened up an opportunity to have a more informal check-in time instead. We gather for a family prayer in the evening and I'll often ask a question and everyone will respond. What was your favorite part of the day? Or what kind thing did you do for someone today? Or what kind thing did someone do for you? Or what interesting thing did you learn? Or what are you grateful for? I love this. It's great to have some time to just chat, and it often evolves into telling stories or jokes, or tickling or other shenanigans. More CFM. But that's just fine. (You know, until we actually need to get to bed... and then it can become problematic, but we won't talk about that right now.)
January was also Learn to Ski Month for our family! After being curious about skiing for a few years, and even giving it a little go two years ago, we finally decided to go all in and learn to ski this year. I figured we wouldn't know if we actually like it or not unless we really try. So we bought season passes for the family, signed Jack and Eliza up for ski school through their elementary school, and planned on the rest of us taking a few lessons. Friday, December 27th
- Ben and I went to Sundance together for the first time, on a date, at night
- He had a little bit of experience so we went to the handle tow area and he taught me how to stop and turn
- After a few runs there, we decided to try the lift; then since it was dark and neither of us had been there before, we missed the first drop-off, and when we saw the steep incline going up to the summit I seriously wondered if we'd make it back down the mountain alive and ever see our kids again
- We slowly, laboriously skied to the base of the mountain. And headed home.
- I also broke a pole when it got caught on the bar of the lift, so I skied down using one pole and holding the pieces of the broken one until I found a trash can.
Saturday, January 4th
- We took all the kids to Sundance, mostly to give Jack and Eliza the most basic of basics before Ski School started a few days later
- We found out that the cheap place where we rented our equipment messed all kinds of things up: one of Luke's skis wasn't fitted to his boot, and Jack and Cat's skis were fitted to the other one's boots, and one of the sets of poles wasn't the same length. This meant that Jack's skis were too big for him, making things extra hard for him, and that Luke couldn't ski at all until he borrowed Eliza's boots and skis (their feet are nearly the same size), and of course those skis were too big for him.
- Cat and Eliza took to skiing right away.
- Jack did not. He got very frustrated, very quickly.
- Luke was in between. The too-long skis didn't do him any favors.
Friday. January 10th
- First day of Ski School for Jack and Eliza. They stayed in the handle tow area the whole time.
- I also had my first lesson, and more equipment trouble as I brought the wrong boots, grabbing Ben's boots, which look exactly like mine but are a little bigger, so of course they wouldn't fit in my skis. We'd hurried as fast as we could to get to Sundance after school, stopping at home to change and eat a quick lunch, then dropping Luke off at a friend's house, and we were already running later than I wanted, so stopping at the rental shop to rent boots and get my bindings adjusted so I could have my lesson really bothered me. Luckily, I ended up being just a bit late to my lesson and jumped in with my group right as they were getting started.
- I'd also forgotten everyone's goggles.
- After the lesson, both Jack and Eliza were SO HAPPY. They LOVED it. What a relief.
Monday, January 13th
- I went up to Sundance while the kids were at school so I could have my second lesson
- I continued to work on turning and trying to get my skis parallel instead of snow ploughing all the time
Friday, January 17th
- Jack and Eliza's second day of ski school, and their first time going on the lift
- Luke's first lesson, at the handle tow, practicing going up with zombie arms independently (he got up to the top of the hill about 50% of the time, his teacher said), adjusting his speed when coming down, and turning
- While the kids had lessons, I skied on my own and managed to break another pole
