Poor blog!

I've been neglecting this blog lately!  Seems life just gets so busy sometimes :) 
Funny (but sad) stuff I heard at kindergarten this morning....  Miss Katie asked me how our trip to Boston was.  She mentioned that when she asked Zachary about the trip he just said that he got to play his DS.  And it was cold.  hmmmm, wonder if he noticed all of those 27,000 runners and Daddy going past??

Ski day at Vail

For probably the first time ever, we arrived "early" at Vail!  We headed into town searching for the free parking spots.  In Vail, you can either shell out $25 to park in the garage for the day, or park at one of the free parking spots scattered throughout the town.  Unfortunately most of the free spots require you to take a shuttle bus to the slopes, which only runs every 30 or 40 minutes.  That makes for quite a lag time from when you get parked if you just miss the bus.  So we found a location within walking distance at a municipal building.  Yahoo, our day is starting out great!
We actually were on the chairlift at 9:05, a feat I'm not sure we've ever accomplished.  There was fresh new snow and the sun was shining.  We headed over to Blue Sky Basin right away.  Along the way we were stopped by a friendly SharpShooter employee who took some fun pictures of us.  Too bad they cost so much money to buy, as some of these pictures were quite cute :)

Our plans for the day included meeting up with my friend Carol who was also on vacation, but staying at Vail. 
We had an early lunch at the "Dawg Haus".  This is a cool place because you get to eat outdoors and the prices are relatively affordable - $7.25 for a footlong chili dog.  It was a huge hot dog and it refueled us for a long day of skiing.
Around 1:30 we met up with Carol and her friends and we skied around the front side of the mountain.  We ended up skiing until 4:00pm, at which time we decided it had been a long enough day of skiing.  My arms and legs were quite tired and sore by that time so it was definitely a good quiting time for me!
When we walked back to our car we were bummed to see that we got a parking ticket!  ughhh.  A $38 parking ticket.  Oh man.  However, we really did feel like that parking spot was a good one, so we will be sending a letter to the town of Vail to fight the ticket.
When we got back to our condo we went to the hot tub again.  For dinner we went to the Kickapoo Tavern and enjoyed a huge plate (only a half order!) of nachos.  They were delicious.  Then back to the condo to fall asleep in front of the TV :)

Skiing Breck

We spent our first day of skiing on our trip at Breckenridge.  I really like Breck because there are many peaks to ski on, all in a row - that makes it seem easily to navigate (or maybe just easier to read the map, because we did end up getting lost a few time!).  Lots of varied terrain.  We even got to venture up a t-bar to the peak of one of the mountains were a windy, freezing bowl awaited us!  In addition to the normal cold windy weather that is usually there, we also got to experience quite a bit of snowfall on occasion.  Seems like one of the peaks would have snow blowing, and the other would be sunny.  We did ski the whole resort and enjoyed most of it.  The most memorial experience of the day though was when I did a face plant.  I was following Alan though some trees and I got my ski tip caught on a little tree.  Then I immediately plowed face first into the snow - very hard.  I checked my teeth right away, and was relived to found out they were all still there.  I did get a fat lip though, and black bruise under my lip.  It also hurt my ribs on one side.  But I survived.  Eventually. :)
For dinner we went to our fav "Downstairs at Eric's" and enjoyed a pitcher of beer, burgers and fries.  uggh, we were pretty stuffed by the time we left.  After we got back to our condo, we enjoyed the warm waters of our hot tub.  It sure felt good!

Snow day - Side Cut Park

Today the kids and Alan were lucky enough to have a snow day.  Yep, they actually closed the University!  Lucky them!  Unfortuately for me it was only a level 2 emergency so I had to still go to work.  Since I didn't have to get the kids ready and take them anywhere I actually got to work almost an hour early than I normally do!  Mostly because I was going to leave early so I could come home and enjoy the snow with the family.  When I got home, we took a trip over to Side Cut metropark to go on the sledding hill.  The hill was pretty busy and we noticed immediately that someone had built some small jumps at the end of the hill.  Sounds fun, right?  Well it sure did for Zachary and he kept trying to go down and hit one of them. Sure enough he finallhy did.  When he launched off that jump, well, it didn't end well.  He landed face first.  Then he started bawling.  Poor kid!!  I thought for sure he had hurt his mouth, but what was actually giving him pain was his arm.  Seems he twisted it in some odd direction and it really hurt.  I thought at first he may have broken it, but he didn't and after sitting it out for awhile he as feeling up to one more "boring" run down the hill and a walk in the woods.

We had some fun playing in the woods. 

Watch out Alan, I sense a sneak attack!!!

Penguin Power!

The 2nd graders have to make a penguin for their science project.  Did I mention it had to be full size?  Sydney got the Chinstrap penguin, which is 27 inches tall.  For me it was a given that her penguin was going to be sewn out of fabric.  Fire up the glue gun, this will be fun!  (or maybe not)  We started by making a pattern and then cutting it out of old white t-shirts that we have.  Due to all of the technical conferences we used to attend, we have an ample amount of t-shirts to use, which was a plus.  After I sewed it on my sewing machine and flipped it around for it's grand reveal, Sydney initially informed me that it didn't look like the pattern.  And she didn't like it.  oh my.  Well after I convinced her that we didn't have enough plain white t-shirts (with no designs to show through on them) to make another one, she finally came around to liking it.
Then it was time to bring it to life!  We filled it up with left over stuffing and t-shirt fabric leftovers.  Sydney sewed up the opening.

First, he got his signature "strap" drawn on him.  We also needed to make him stand up so we glued him to a piece of cardboard and gave him some pink feet.  Then we designed some flippers and other features out of black felt.  Glued it all on him, and he was done!

We thought he turned out so cute that he is going to live in Zachary's room when he comes back from school.  Zachary can't wait!

Ski trip to Boyne

We decided to make a short ski trip up to Boyne this weekend.  We drove up Friday night.  Since we got there late we didn't even get a chance to go out to dinner - but that was OK, because we have 2 days of skiing ahead of us!

At Nubs Nob Zachary immediately started asking about going on double black diamond runs.  Well, we need to set some limits, so we let him only go on single black diamonds!  :)   This one had moguls and a steep side.  He did manage to go down the moguls with Alan the first time without falling.  He wanted to show me how well he did, so I went with him.

Unfortunately when Zachary skied down the black diamond run with me, he kept falling, which made him frustrated.  It ended in tears and repeatedly telling me that it was my fault he was falling!  Not sure how he came up with that, but that was the end of black diamond runs for the day.



Zachary plans his next run.

Sydney snuggles with daddy by the fireplace when we stopped to get hot chocolate and warm up.

Sydney's boots broke on our last trip, but she loved the boots.  So we decided some duct tape would do just fine keeping them snug and on her leg.  Luckily, that did the trick and she didn't complain once.  However, the red pieces on the floor were a telltale sign of what was to come with Zachary's boots.

The bottom plates were definately falling apart rapidly.  At first it was just the heel plates - but by the end of the day the front plates were starting to fall apart too!!

We all had fun skiing at Boyne Mountain. 





The kids couldn't even wait for us to hit the slopes.

The last part of our day at Boyne Mountain was spend on the terrain parks.  Zack had no fear as he went over the box.  He even convinced all of us to try it out too.  We all got a good laugh as we all went across it fine, but Alan fell!  Alan did try it a second time and did just fine :)

For our last run the kids wanted to go check out the largest terrain park - the half pipe!  It was huge when we got in it.  I'm sure Zachary will be a master of all of the terrain  features soon.



Rainbow

Today when I was dropping Zachary off at Kindergarten I noticed that there was a rainbow hidden behind the clouds.  It was pretty special because it had not been raining (or even snowing!) near us and the rainbow was partially hidden, but looked wider than most rainbows I have seen.  So I told Zachary that it was going to be a very special day today because of that rainbow.  Zachary replied "I wish rainbows never faded."  :)   What a nice thought!

Snow day!!

well, technically it was a school closure due to icy roads.  The kids were so excited!  The conversation went like this...
"Yeah Zack, school is closed today!!"
"Woohoo!  It's a stay home day!!"
"No, we still have to go to Discovery.  Mom has to work."
"YAHOO!!!  WE GET TO TAKE OUR DS's TO DISCOVERY!!!!"
....and then then buzz never stopped, not even the minute after I dropped them off and they ran away to play with their friends at CDC.  :)

Slumber party fun

Zachary had a whole weekend of birthday parties scheduled, so we decided Sydney should have a friend or two over to spend the night.  She invited two of her close buds, Morgan and Rebecca.  Zachary's party on Friday was actually a slumber party - his first!  It was a classmate from kindergarten, and the boys were all very excited about it.  Zachary called it a "video gaming slumber party".  oh my.  So after I dropped Zachary off at his party, we picked up Sydney's friends.  Unfortunately Rebecca is allergic to cats, but we did a pretty good job of keeping them away from her.  The girls had a lot of crazy fun, giggling and running all over the house.  Eventually at 9pm they settled down for a movie (Madagascar 2) and some popcorn.  After the movie, they stayed up until about midnight!  I went to sleep around 11:30, but I know they were still giggling when I fell asleep.

Boy was I surprised when her friends came wandering into our bedroom at 4:15 am!  I guess Rebecca's throat was a bit sore from the kitties by that time.  I was hoping they would go back to sleep, but I guess they were ready to begin their day!  I hardly got any sleep that morning and decided to get up around 6:30.  It sure made for a long day!!

Meanwhile, I was told that Zachary stayed up until around midnight also, but slept in until 7:15.  Still, both the kids were whipped on Saturday!!  He got a really cool lightsaber, Darth Vader mask (and some 3D glasses) from the birthday party.

I won!! I won!!

Occasions like this come around so rare, that I have to share!!  For New Years Eve we spent a relaxing evening of munching on wine and cheese, snacks, and playing Trival Pursuit.  This year's game went surprisingly fast and I actually won!  It was pretty awesome :) 

Looks like it's going to be a great year!!

Movie Night

Movie night is so much fun now since we have that cool new popcorn maker!  The popcorn is DELICIOUS!!  so yummy.....

Skiing at Boyne Mountain

After a slow start, we made to Boyne Mountain.  With it being a holiday week, it was busy at the rentals and they were running out of equipment.  We were sweating it!  Thankfully, they had what we needed for Sydney.  The lines weren't too bad and unlike yesterday the sun was out making it feel a bit warmer.

We got stuck in a few places and had the make the kids go down blue (Intermediate) runs.  They did pretty good - a bit slow which was expected, but hardly any complaining :)  They will be great skiers in no time.

Since the roads were so good, we decided to stay until 4:00 for our full day of skiing.  A great trip!!

Ski day at Nubs Nob

Day 2 of our after-Christmas ski trip. It's so nice to have the week off of work as the new year is beginning, not worrying too much about the house being cluttered with opened presents, and wrapping paper (still) and of course the decorations that we love so much, but end up wearing out their welcome after a month :) I'm always sad to see the decorations go, but there is something to be said about that feeling of great organization when they get packed away and a cleaning frenzy begins!

We decided to get full lifts for the kids instead of just sticking to the free beginner area.  That worked out good.  The kids also got to partake in our "bad junk food" menu for lunch - Little Debbies!!

When we were skiing at Nubs Nob today, these highlights occurred:

* Zachary no longer needs his edgie-wedgies!! yahoo!

* The kids skied their first blue runs - well, by mistake, but still, they did it!

* Alan ran into a kid while he was skiing backwards!
* Sydney's boot buckle broke off her boots and we needed to rent skis & boots for her :(

* Zachary ran into a tree! Luckily it was only his leg that hit it, but he still got his ski knocked off and he fell down :)

* I jumped off a chair lift while trying not to "land" on Zachary getting off the lift!

Finish it off with a late dinner at Lou's Pizza, meeting up with Dawn and her cousin, and it was a big day indeed! That must be why Alan fell asleep at 9:30 :)

Day 1 of Boyne Ski trip

We hit the road in the morning (made it out at 9:15, yahoo!) and was thrilled to find that the roads were clear and it was an easy 5 hour drive up north.  Even more enjoyable was that the kids were occupied with their new DS's so we didn't hear any complaining or fighting the whole trip!!  That was the best! :)

We went tubing over at Boyne Highlands.  It was a lot of fun.  This year they did not have a "fast" and "slow" side, but just one run.  Still, it was good and we were there for an hour before dinner.

Dinner was at the Mitchell St. Pub.  Good food, and hot nachos!  Who would have guessed that "spicy" on the menu description really meant spicy!!  (not me I guess.  haha!)

Artwork

Here are some random pieces of artwork that have been decorating our house for the holidays...

Checking out the Christmas loot!

We had a day full of checking out the new toys.  Sure, it still looks like our house exploded with all of the toys and boxes all over the place, but there's nothing like a few lazy days after Christmas :)