Misfits

I soooo wish I had gotten a picture of these kids BEFORE they removed half of their embarrassingly, awkward, so wrong in every way on every child wardrobe.

The picture tells nothing, but my mind will have to remember the hilarity.

Jen and Jer were down for a weekend and we met them at Grand America for a swim and dinner.  It was right after Christmas so the hotel was still pretty full.

We paraded our 5 cute-ish and 1 cute, cute baby (no picture) around the hotel while Jen and I reverted back to the good old college days maturity level.

When we finally got to the elevator to go to the pool we finally all noticed how stupid our kids all looked. 

  

Unfortunately they're ours to keep and I think Ansen and Jeremy have had the same thoughts a time or two about me and Jen.

To Ski . . . or not to Ski ?!

After Addison came home from the 4th grade field trip loving skiing we started thinking about how this is the perfect year to start skiing as a family.  No babies, no accidents . . . seems good enough to try. 

Addison liked it, but that wasn't surely going to be the case for our over the top complainer - Olivia, and our sometimes moody 3 year old. 

But we decided to give it a go - it would be good family time if it worked. 

And they loved it! 

We had no whining (except from me . . . I was a little nervous at first),

no complaining and

VERY little crying (only until Liv realized that amazingly our neighbor was there and in her ski school class).

Luckily Ansen's an awesome, awesome skier and somehow pulls patience like I've never seen out of thin air to teach Drew since he's too young for ski school.

Drew yells for Ansen to let go of him and though he's staying up pretty well, there is no stopping and no control over direction . . . so we're still working on it. 

We talked my mom into going with us the second time.  She had decided to totally give up on skiing after she tore him hamstring water skiing a couple of years ago, but she came and it went well.  So she's talked my dad into going again too.  

Some December-ness

We made gingerbread houses with the Roberts. 

We had our 3rd annual Christmas donation neighborhood party and President Belnap helped us out as Santa.

It was the only "Santa" we saw this year. 

It was cold that night, but the kids did not seem to mind in the least . . . there were suckers, hot chocolate, treats and snow. 

The adults stayed huddled (smartly) around the fire pits. 

If the air wasn't cold enough, Olivia decided to carry around this big ball of snow for good measure.

And then we met for breakfast at Kneaders (with apparently everyone else in Utah County) and headed to the donation drop off with a packed car (and 3 more). 


And right at the VERY beginning of December (actually . . . I think it had to be the beginning of November) we had Ryan, Kendall and Halle here.

And we made our annual carmel apples . . .

The school singing concerts - Ansen came this year and was surprised that "that's all there is after all that time waiting . . . "  Yup. 

This is all we got of Addie before the camera battery died. 

And we grabbed Olivia in the hall with my phone. 

Class Parties Gallore.

A little Christmas minute-to-win-it for the big kids.

Crafts, games and treats for the littles at the "Polar Express."

Addison went skiing with the 4th grade and peeked our family interest in skiing - more on that after the holiday.

Another late night at Banna and Branda's.  Can't beat the hot tub over there . . . and I got my CPE (Continuing Professional Education) hours finished up during the movie so win-win.

Snow!

Winter is here and Fall is over . . . even though Olivia tried so hard to preserve it. This cup of water with Olivia's beautiful (dead) leaves sat on the counter top for a week or so. I couldn't get rid of it, because it made me smile every time I saw it.

The snow finally came, just a week late for Christmas.

The girls wanted to play in the snow so I made them wait until Drew was up from his nap since I was sure he'd love it too.   He woke up, we all got dressed up and headed out. 

In my mind, the kids were going to frolic in the snow while I got some cute pictures with my new camera and then as they continued to joyfully frolic I would shovel the walks and drive way.  Then we would all gleefully go inside to warm up and enjoy some hot chocolate and good conversation together. 

As a mother, it's just better to go with the flow with absolutely no idea of how the anticipated event will go. 

Drew stood in the garage crying for the first 20 minutes.

 

I tried to take some pictures, but got really paranoid about the snow flake that hit my lens window (or whatever you call it) since my Dad just gave me all his tips for keeping my camera in good condition and the #1 rule (besides the obvious, but still discussed, rules to not drop the camera and not let the kids touch the camera . . . EVER) was KEEP THE LENS CLEAN. 

The girls did joyfully frolic in the snow and I did shovel the front walk and a 1/4 of the driveway.

Drew did finally stop crying long enough to walk out to the driveway, fall in the snow and start crying again. 

So, I g ave up and Drew and I went in.  He was perfectly content to watch the girls out his bedroom window.

The girls did eventually come in and we did have hot chocolate and good conversation.

I usually strongly consider the aftermath of such a event, but didn't think it into my wonderful afternoon plans.   Eveywhere I looked was another piece of wet clothing and dirty water was melted all over the kitchen floor. 

So in the end. . .

I learned that Drew does NOT like to frolic in the snow . . .  

unless the problem was just that he had to wear pink boots.

And the girls got a little reminder course of how to take care of our stuff afterwards when we want to play in the snow.

Fun and Freezing

Friday night we went to Lisa's boyfriend's choir concert, dinner,

Temple Square where we froze our butts off (not really, but it would have been nice)

except for Drew who stayed pretty toasty (and so cute),

and I really had no problem wearing this "ear band" around the whole night in an effort to stay warm.

and then we randomly ran into Ansen's cousin Maury, Virgina and the kids up from AZ. It was such a surprise, so great to see them and fun to catch up.

And then for hot chocolate at Crown Burgers (yeah, they sell hot chocolate). We waited for 15 minutes while someone in the back opened little packets and mixed up each individual cup for only $1.50 per cup. They were all varying degrees of temperatures when we finally got them.

and DRUMMMMMMM ROLL PLEASE . . .

For the FIRST TIME EVER in Olivia's life, she fell asleep in the thick of the "action" right in the middle of the restaurant. Seriously, NEVER happened.

It was short lived since as soon as we got in the car she was asking for a movie and thought it was a joke ("Is that a joke Mom?") that she fell asleep.

What? Why? . . . NO!

This is a late post. Sunday, October 12th it snowed. Luckily, we left that afternoon for a hiatus in Newport Beach where it was high 70's all week! Unfortunately it fueled the fire . . . I really dislike snow and I want to move to California. Newport Beach to be precise. I realize I'd never own a house and we would barely be able to feed ourselves, but the beach, oh the beach. And more importantly, oh the snow, NO snow that is. I'm going to start watching Monster Jobs.