January 2019

I keep telling myself I'm going to get around to posting on here, and then I keep not doing anything about it.  I'm not about to try to play catch up over the past year (at least not today), but thought I would do a quick update on this past January 2019.  Maybe some of this stuff will get a post of it's own, but most likely not.  

Utah Trip

I took the girls to Utah to visit cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  We flew out on New Year's Eve actually, and rang in the new year by going to bed early.  Poor Paul stayed home to work.  

Jennie and her girls joined us for most of the week that we were at my parent's house and the girls were absolutely in heaven playing together in grandpa and grandma's basement.  They did dress-ups, put on shows, sang and danced and pretended their hearts out, and generally got along incredibly well.

It was nice to see my grandma, who is still hanging in there.  She has Alzheimers and doesn't communicate much, but you can see that she watches the people around her and every now and then she tries to speak up and comment on something she thinks the girls are doing that pleases her.

We did four days of skiing, which was amazing and so much fun.  The first two we spent at Brighton with the girls in ski school.  Clara and Rose did a full day the first day, then just the morning class their second day.  The rest of the time we all skiied together.

That first day, Rose was not at all happy about going to ski school and cried copious tears and threw a tantrum.  I was worried that she wouldn't be willing to go back in after lunch (we check the girls out and eat lunch together outside on the patio with a picnic that Jennie and I packed that morning).  She was definitely upset about going back and I know her legs were tired (oh how I remember that feeling from when I was a kid!), but I talked with the staff at Brighton about how she needed a firm but kind teacher who would just deal with the complaining until they got going.  Once Rose gets past that initial bout of woe-is-me she does great and actually has tons of fun. 

I stayed to watch to be sure Rose was going to make it and sure enough, she came stomping out of the ski school room with a tear on her cheek and a grimace, but once they had skis on and were moving, her smiles came back.  She did great the rest of the days and we never had the same complaints again except for when we told her it was time to go home and we were done skiing for the day.  Then she wasn't happy again because she wanted to continue skiing.

The third day we went to Solitude, which I loved since that's where I learned to ski.  The girls kept wanting to go through the trees, which was hilarious and frustrating because someone kept crashing and getting stuck.  But it's also what I remember loving when I was a kid.  

Solitude isn't as good for the girls just yet because it has fewer easy runs and more difficult blue runs, but they handled it all pretty well.  

But easily, hands-down my favorite place we skied was Snow Basin.  My dad has a season pass and he took just me, Clara, and Rose on Monday when Jennie's girls had to go back to school.

It was super windy and snowy and cold - definitely the worst conditions of the whole trip since the other days were beautiful, sunny, and bright - but it was so worth it.  I love the resort, I love the runs, I even loved the crazy conditions.  

The girls also seemed to have the most fun this day, with 3 other days of skiing already under their belts.  Their confidence was high and they laughed and giggled all the way down the mountain, intentionally falling into the soft powder until I told them to knock it off because I was getting tired of pulling them back out!  

   

 

My best run of the trip was at Brighton one morning when I was skiing with Jennie and my dad.  My dad told me about this ap, which calculates speed and distance as you ski.  We got competitive and were racing to see who was going the fastest.  43.9 MPH is pretty darn fast, I think.

We also met up with some pretty special people while we were in Utah.  Randomnly, we ran into my friend Rachel's son's birthfather at the ski rental store.  Rachel and Ryan were adopting around the same time that Paul and I were going through the process for the first time and we've stayed in touch ever since.  So when I saw their son's birthfather, I immediately recognized him from pictures on their blog and social media.  I was super awkward about it, but he was really nice (just like Rachel had always described him).  Now if Rachel and I could just meet in person...

We also got to meet up with Kayli and baby Felicity!!  We had just seen her the previous month in Southern California when we were down at Joshua Tree and Disneyland, but this time we also got to visit with Connor (Kayli's husband) and her Grandpa Lamoreaux, who is seriously the nicest, sweetest person in the world.  Felicity is just the cutest baby and Clara loved holding her.  We all sat around and watched her almost attempt to crawl and it was the best.

Jessica wasn't ever able to ski with us this season because she had to work, but she came over in the evenings a couple of times and the girls enjoyed playing Spot It, Jr. and Cat's Cradle with her.

Meanwhile, back at home, Paul actually did another guided fly-fishing trip, this time with his dad, in the Sierras and caught some massive fish.  So it's not like he didn't have any fun while we were off skiing.

Yard Work

We spent a Saturday morning back at home cleaning up weeds and leaves together as a family and I thought to grab my camera and take some pictures.  It's been a few weeks since we did this and we need to get out and weed again thanks to all the rain we have been having.

I think after all the fun, we were all ready for school to start back up again though.  We had quite a few rainy days in January and the kids loved going for walks in the rain with their umbrellas.

Utah Ski Trip 2018

Since the girls have an extra week off school right at the beginning of the year, we decided to head to Utah after Christmas to ring in the New Year and start the year off right with some skiing.  

 

Even though I grew up skiing Solitude and learning there on Moonbeam, we have been taking the girls to Brighton for ski school.  This was Clara's third year skiing (she started when she was 4) and she is doing just awesome for only going 2-3 times each season.  She went right to class and had a great attitude the whole time about it, doing a full day of instruction our first day, and then just a half day class the second day so we could have more time to ski together as a family.

Rose, on the other hand, struggled with going to class.  Which is unsurprising since Clara was the same way the first year that we had her skiing.  This is the first year that Rose was old enough to be enrolled (and actually, we cheated a little bit because she was supposed to be four and her birthday was still a couple weeks away) so last year she just skiied with me for a day and had done pretty well with the wedgie straps attached to the tips of her skis.  

But this year, the real problem was just that she didn't want to be in the class at all.  I don't think it helped that the first morning she was put in a group with a really young, cute instructor who let her quit pretty early in the morning before they actually started skiing and go back inside the ski school.  Really all Rose wanted to do was play in the snow and eat it.  

 

I know Rose and she has a hard time with anything that seems hard or foreign at first, but if she just tries it then she is fine and has a great time.  Swimming, ice skating, even dance at first were like that for her.  And there is almost no reasoning with her when she starts wailing about how she doesn't want to do it.  But get her going and then she pretty quickly will change her mind and decide whatever she's doing is the best thing ever.

So after lunch and giving Rose a pep talk and a little tough love, and then talking with one of the program directors, we put Rose back in for the afternoon but with an older male instructor.  I told him that I was pretty sure if he could just get Rose moving down the slope her tears would go away.  Sure enough, even though she wailed and moaned the first 10 minutes out of the building as they trudged through the snow and got set up on skis and went up the magic carpet, once they started going downhill and she felt some actual speed, she did tons better.

By the end of the day she was all smiles and declaring how much she loved skiing.  

We had a repeat performance of her tantrum for the first couple of minutes the next morning, but the same program director was there and once again, as soon as they got Rose up on skis and moving, she was all smiles and had a great time.

Which made it so fun for all of us because once classes were over Paul and I were able to ski with the girls, which is seriously one of the funnest things ever.  I just love watching them ski and cheering for them and seeing how proud they are of being able to do something so difficult.  There are so, so, so many lessons learned from skiing about resiliency and determination and effort, and such a great reward with speed and strength and endurance.  

And the girls absolutely soak in their bonding time with us on the chairlift and skiing down the slopes.  We skiied until the last minute the resort would let us for the afternoon because Clara just wanted to do run after run.  I would still love to get the girls back on the slopes here in California but I don't know if it's going to happen this season with how busy our weekends are through the rest of the Spring.  

 

I wasn't very good about pulling out my camera the rest of the trip, but did snap these pictures of Rose playing dress-up at Aunt Jennie's house.  Or "Adelaide's house" as Rose puts it.  She loves going there, both because she loves her cousins and because she loves all the toys and dress-ups.  The girls had a great time playing together, which they do so well, and I'm glad we got to spend a couple of days at Jennie & Ryan's, just keeping things low-key since Jennie's girls were back in school.

I took my girls sledding at Soldier Hollow one day when Jennie's girls were in school, which was a lot of fun.  Although it was still a lot of work even with the magic carpet to pull you back up the hill to sled on their runs.  But Clara and Rose loved it.  I was starting to come down with a bad, bad cold though and to be honest, felt a little miserable and ended up completely losing my voice after this.

Our last morning in Utah, we got to go to Emma's baptism.  It's one of the main reasons why we wanted to be in Utah in January in the first place and we are so proud of this girl.  She is such a sweetheart and I can't hardly believe she is already 8 and that Clara will be getting baptized next year, just like this cousin that she adores.
 

The long drive home wasn't too terrible.  It was just me and the girls and we left straight from the baptism to head out.  Fortunately, long drives like that aren't too bad for me and I'm pretty used to making them alone.  The girls watch movies, read books, and enjoy snacks, and I listen to audiobooks and podcasts, and every now and then we just turn everything off and talk.  It's actually pretty enjoyable.  

Looking forward to skiing with these girls again next year!