Spring Break: New England Style

I was thrilled when I got a text message a few months back from my favorite brother Ben announcing that he had his Spring Break from graduate school coming up in March.  He had caught the "skiing bug" and was trying to find somewhere to do this.  Luckily it didn't take much persuasion to get him to drive over and spend the week with us.  Our kids were once again beyond thrilled to have more family come to visit.  

I started searching local/relatively close ski resorts and the best deals for all of us.  In the end we kind of put plans in stone at the last minute, but it all turned out great.  Ben arrived LATE Monday evening.....3am late.  Because of this, we had a relatively relaxing day on Tuesday complete with sleeping in, kids in school, board games, chit chat, piano playing, and yummy food.

The next day, Ben and I headed out to the Dartmouth Skiway WITHOUT kids to ski for the day.  All the kids had school and Eli was watched by a good friend after his preschool.  We managed to borrow a friends skis for Ben that happened to be nearly the same shoe size and only a few inches taller than Ben.  Pretty much perfect.  We had a great time hanging out together on the lifts, trying some fun moguls and hills, racing down the mountain, crashing a few times a piece, and laughing together.  It has been a really long time since I have spent a day on the slopes without children.  

Around 2 pm we loaded up and headed back home to pick up Eli, grab the kids ski equipment, and pick up from school to head over to Whaleback Mountain for after school ski.  Once M and R were ready to ski, we got 4 pm lift tickets (<$10) and all headed back out.  Maddie especially had a great time with Ben after her lessons and got to show off her "Double Black Diamond" skills to a rather stunned Uncle.  In Ben's terms "I think she might be better than me".  That is quite possible, but more than anything she is fearless.  By the time evening hit, we were all exhausted and stopped and grabbed our family favorite Little Caesars Pizza.  

The next morning (Thursday), we loaded up our stuff, kept the kids home from school, and headed over near Killington to a Vermont local favorite ski resort "Pico Mountain".  This mountain was incredible.  It was way cheaper than the big resorts but nearly as large and had lots of lifts to ride and plenty of great snow.  Ben took M and R on some of the bigger lifts while I stuck with Eli.  We spent 5+ hours skiing to hearts content.  When we were all tuckered out, we packed up and headed back home.  We have found great pleasure in listening to audio books in the car as of recent and enjoyed listening to the end of "Indian in the Cupboard".  I am amazed at how well behaved my children are when we turn these on.  I don't think we ever pulled out the Kindles during the one hour car ride there or back.

Too soon I had to say my goodbyes to little bro and head off to work.  He left later on that evening with the plan that we will see each other at some point this summer.  I have really enjoyed him coming twice to visit this year.  It has been amazing to get to know him on an "adult level", instead of just being my little brother.  

*I loved all the beautiful music he played on our piano keyboard*

*The Dartmouth Skiway-- this place will always hold many fond memories of this year*

*Eli was so proud of his fighter airplane he built out of Trios that he wanted a picture of it*

*both members of the "Double Black Diamond Club"*

*Mommy and her crazy skiing kiddos at Pico Mountain*

*I love hanging out with this cutie on the mountain*

March, already?

Last year, February dragged on and on for me {used to happen to a lesser extent in AZ as well}. By then I was tired of cold weather, winter clothes, snow, snotty noses, long pants, etc.  The magical winter wonderland outdoors was no longer so exciting and I started to long for Spring time.  I felt like Spring would never come.  This year, that has definitely NOT been the case.  I feel like we blinked and February came and went. If I could describe February in word for our family it would have to be "skiing".  We have skied our way through this winter, and have all enjoyed it so much more because of that.  

Now that March has hit, I wonder how much longer this snow will stick around.  Last year we had a week with temperatures reaching 80 degrees.  Somehow I don't think that will be the case.  Until then I will content myself with smiling at this cute picture of my boys cuddling together on E's bed to watch a show on the Kindle.  It is moments like these that makes having children so close together totally worth it.  I sincerely hope that they will always feel close to each other, and that the good times will outweigh the fighting and arguments that seem to happen way too often.

Winter Sunsets

Thanks babe for taking such amazing pictures!  I can't wait until we finally buy a "real camera" for your landscape photos and my people photos :)

Kindergarten Photos

At Mt Lebanon Elementary School, each teacher has their very own "page" and Robby's teacher is FANTASTIC at updating hers with pictures of the children.  I cherish these pictures; I feel like it gives me some insight and peace of mind as to what my child is doing while he is away from me.  One of the things I worry the most about my kids, is whether they are happy at school.  Do they get along with others? Are other children nice to them?  Do they feel included?  Does anyone make fun of them?  Are they lonely? Bored? Do they listen to their teachers?  Are they respectful?  Are they loved by their teachers and staff members at the school?  Are they treated with respect in turn?  Do the teachers really work with their unique needs or are they unflexible?  The list clearly goes on and on. 

 I like to think that every parent feels that way.  I tend to especially worry about Robby.  Maddie is so couragous and strong, she radiates personality and happiness, she's friendly and makes friends easily, she easily adapts to new situations, and she always comes home bubbling with excitement about the fun things she has done at school.  Robby on the other hand, tends to be much more rigid, he doesn't like change, he has a harder time making friends, he keeps to himself about what he does at school and rarely will tell me about his day, and can sometimes be a bit of a loner.  I worry myself to death about how well he's adapting.  I just want him to be healthy and happy in body and spirit.  I yearn for a confirmation that public school is the best option for him.

So for me these precious photos mean the world.  They show me that he is growing and learning.  They show me that he is thriving, despite all of my worries.  They show me that he is listening to his teachers.  But overall, my favorite part is seeing him smiling and playing with friends.  To me that is number one to see him interacting with others and enjoying his school friends.

  I have had the pleasure to volunteer a few times a month in Robby's school class this year.  I love hearing other children call his name when they are told to pick a partner.  I love how all the children crowd around Robby and I when I read stories out loud during reading time {after snacks}.  

So although there have been several rough days of Kindergarten this year, I am happy to say that Robby is growing and thriving at school.  He is learning that he is not "running the show", that he can be brave during new situations, that he can use his "brave writing" during journal time, and that even when he has a hard day he can start over the next day and make it a great day.

I sure love this little {big} boy of mine.  He makes me worry, cry, laugh, sing, be silly, and smile.  He brings me so much joy.  He is so tender and loving with others.  He is not afraid to hug and kiss me in front of friends.  He is compassionate and is the first one to tell me he loves me when I need it the most.  My heart is bursting with love for my oldest son.  I couldn't imagine my life without him.   

Robby and Anja

Robby with his buddy J

Apple picking at Riverview Farm: Robby was pretty proud of his huge apple he picked. He was so excited that he saved the apple and brought it home to me.

Making paper Corn on the Cobs for "Fall Festival", ie Halloween

Thanksgiving turkeys....pretty creative if you ask me

Robby and Maddie's class performing at Morning Sing right before Christmas.  I was a total slacker and didn't go.  This picture is courtesy of a good friend.

{M is the shorty on the top, middle row wearing a short-sleeved green shirt, R is front and center wearing a maroon long sleeved shirt}

I am waiting to get the actual digital copy of this one.....but this is Robby and I on the day they celebrated his birthday.  We had a blast bringing blueberry muffins and getting to read "Zoomer", one of my boys faves at home "because it's so funny" per Mr R.

The kindergarten puppet shows are a riot!  These little kiddos have the funniest things to say.

FINALLY working on penmanship.  We {I} have waiting all year long to see academics pushed in kindergarten.  I am very pleased to hear they are finally working on reading, writing, and mathematics.  They have just started working on sight words as well (even though Robby is still way ahead of them).  I love seeing his handwriting slowly develop, I love seeing him begin to master books.  I cannot wait for the future with this kid.

This was such a cute idea that their classroom did.  In honor of the 100th day of school, they worked on performing 100 acts of kindness by V-day.  Robby came home with a stack of kindness hearts that listed all the cute things he did for others around him.



Winter Break: Saturday

We decided to try to get to Ski resort "early" on Saturday.  This meant leaving the house around 9:30am and starting to ski around 10am.  I was so excited to bring Jesse along so that he could see the progress our children have made.  I was equally excited to have the freedom to go on a few runs by myself.  It was really fun to show him how much better they have all gotten at skiing and to see him excited to take the biggies on the ski lift.  He shot some pretty good footage of each of the kids skiing, and he enjoyed riding up the ski lift with Rubba.  We even did one run where all five of us went up the ski lift. 

On Thursday, Eli rode the J-Bar up all by himself on the last two runs of the day {and then skied down the hill with the backpack harness}.  He was very insistent that he also do this by himself on Saturday as well. It was a proud moment to see him go up the lift all by himself over and over again without falling. 

The boys petered out around 12:30pm and Jesse took them to the car. Maddie was still wanting to ski some more, so I ended up taking her down 4-5 more times.  I truly enjoyed being able to ski with my daughter.  She is finally hitting a point where it is no longer a chore to have her ski with me.  She can ski down most of the beginner/intermediate runs and even learned how to ski over moguls. 

My cute Eli boy riding the lift in front of me

Pictures with Maddie on our ski date up the mountain

Winter Break: Friday

This morning I started to panic when I realized that my fun, relaxing week home with the kids was almost up. As weird as I may sound, I actually love having my children home with me.  There are definitely times when it is really convenient to have two of three gone to school full time.  Times that I can lay around and do nothing or read a book if I feel like it.  I can also be super productive and organize entire rooms without breaking up sibling arguments.  But I also miss them like crazy.  I hate how our life is busy and chaotic the moment they walk in the door after school.  I hate trying to cram in extra curricular activities, playdates and errands in the few precious hours between school and bedtime.  I hate trying to be a drill seargant at bedtime and get them down at a reasonable time so that we can get up early for school the next morning. The only thing that got me through this panic was realizing that in less than a month they have a half day/no school day combo and then in April, they have Spring break.

Friday was a busy, lots to do sort of day.  Maddie went to a birthday party for her friend Leah and immensely enjoyed the cowgirl theme.  So that the boys wouldn't be sad about Maddie having such a fun activity, I took them to the movie theater.  We saw the newest cartoon movie out complete with old popcorn, treats, 3D glasses, and a filthy theater. 

After both of those activities we went bowling with the Monteleone's. The kids played "Candle-Pin bowling" that features smaller bowling balls, bumpers and tall skinny pins.  Maddie and Robby really enjoyed this; Mr R was so serious when it came his turn to go.  Eli on the other hand could care less about the game.  He was busy wandering around, laughing, jumping on chairs, trying to escape to play arcade games, running halfway down the lane to bowl, and in general create mischief.  I finally buckled and handed a kindle fire to him and he played games in between turns.  As always, bowling was fun but crazy.  JJ and Eli enjoyed clowning around in the car together....I think Mr E brings out the super sillies in nearly every child he's friends with.

We ended the night with a date for Jesse and I.  We went and ate at this cute Chinese restaurant in Lebanon and finished our date at the grocery store.  It was really nice to clear our heads and take some time for just the two of us.  Thankfully we have a fabulous babysitter that our kids all love!

Some other smaller activities we did during the week included:

*Reading our "Book of Mormon Stories" kid manual every single morning at breakfast. This is yet another reason why I love having no school for the kids.  I love being able to have a lazy morning complete with yummy breakfasts together where we have time to read our scriptures as a family.  I was excited to be able to make Buttermilk pancakes, waffles, french toast, german pancakes, scrambled eggs, muffins, etc. Breakfast is basically my favorite meal of the day. I love cooking breakfast and I love eating it as well.  Too bad most days I don't have time to do this.

*Playing board games together.  One of Rob's favorite things to do besides electronics would have to be board games.  He particularly loves ones involving mathematics.  We went through all of our games this week and realized we had never opened up several of them.  The favored game this week was Quirkle. We also played Monopoly Jr, Rummikub, Parking Lot, and Memory together.  I have full on embraced my inner nerdiness and I am loving becoming a board game family.  Our favorite time to play these games are between Eli's and the biggies bedtimes. 

*Reading/Quiet Time every day.  Whenever I have all three children at home, I feel like I need a little breather some time in the middle of the day.  I need a period of time when there is a calm relaxing atmosphere around my home.  One of the ways I achieve that is holding a mandatory 30 minutes where all the kids pick out there favorite books and we bring pillows and blankets into the family room.  We all sit and "read" our books.  I always love a good book and am typically immersed in one, therefore it is heaven to be able to stop my motherly duties for a period and just read. It's been fun to see Maddie loving to read as well.  I am looking forward to the time that my other two are also reading.

*Playing gymnastics ALL OVER THE HOUSE. I think Maddie probably spent at least an hour each day doing gymnastics all over my house.  She is really trying to improve her handstand hold and does them on walls, into people, against the fridge, next to me, on the couch, you get the idea.  The brothers have also been doing lots of their "tricks" and they love showing me forward/backward rolls, headstands and spinning dancing manuevers.  We have this routine going where we set up our gymnastics mat and they stand in line and take turns doing their tricks. 

*Obviously watching some television.  Because I hate mornings so badly my children have this bad habit of getting up and turning Netflix on the TV on non-school days.  I love this because it buys me an extra 30 minutes to an hour more of sleep, but also hate how they easily become dependant on getting their fix of TV time.  Luckily we have been involved in many different activities this week which has helped to cut back prolonged time in front of the television.

Maddie has been quite obsessed with making sure that she's reading the book of Mormon every day.  She even fell asleep while reading in her scriptures one day at the table.  These particular pictures were snapped one evening while I was making dinner.  I love how dedicated she is becoming with her studies.  She loves bringing her scriptures to church now and really enjoys reading through them during sacrement meeting.  It is really neat to see your child starting to develop the beginning stages of a testimony, but sad at the same time to see their early childhood leaving.

Winter Break: Thursday

Day Four of my children's Winter Break included more of our favorite new hobby: Skiing

I have seriously loved having passes to the Dartmouth Skiway and have used them over and over, making it well worth the money spent.  Luckily the children all seem to enjoy doing it as well. 

 I love how Maddie asks me every single morning if it will be a ski day.  If not, she comes up with all sorts of reasons why we should go.  She has been fearless and tough.  She apparently tried a rather large jump at ski lessons a few weeks back, fell and had a bruised/scratched left cheek for several days.  When it happened, she brushed herself off after a few tears and continued to ski the rest of the time without any complaints.  She wasn't scared to immediately try another jump.  Because of her fearlessness, she has rapidly improved and is now going over small jumps and landing them every time.  She is also skiing parallel nearly all the time and has been bothering me excessively about when she will get her own ski poles.  For now, she is content to borrow mine when we are on the bunny hill.

Robby has also grown to like skiing much more than when the season began.  Of all my children, he is the most hesitant to try a new thing.  He also tends to get very frustrated at himself with failure of any kind.  This includes trying new sports/activities and being unsuccessful in the beginning.  This school year, we have been really focusing on him being brave with these new situations and he is gradually improving.  I have been really proud of Robby this year.  Even though he has had frustrating situations on the slopes and grows tired of skiing after a few hours, he has really pushed through and is learning how to ski!  He was especially excited when he learned how to walk sideways up to the small jump by the J Bar.  He figured out that he actually could do this jump and land it. Huge mommy moment right there when he came over to me and told me that he did it. 

Of all of my children, Eli is by the silliest.  Jesse and I joke around that he is our blonde silly little airhead.  He lives in the moment and gets distracted quite easily.  He laughs his way through life for the most part and everything is a joke.  When I first started teaching him to ski, he approached it the same way.  Instead of taking things seriously, he would just laugh at me and do whatever he felt like.  Talk about frustrating when you are trying to teach safety and technique for skiing.  After a particularly frustrating day, I had a brilliant idea.  I started putting him between my skis and holding his arms while we skied together.  I am sure many of you are wondering why I didn't think about this before.  Answer: I don't know.  Nevertheless, it worked.  Another thing I did was to finally get over my irrational fear of using the harness backpack.  For some reason the first time I tried the harness I felt awkward and the straps seemed to tangle up.  When I tried it again, I finally figured out how to hold onto the straps correctly and I learned how to help steer him down the mountain.  This was a revolutionary experience. Because of this I can finally take all the children up the ski lift and slowly make it down the mountain with Eli.  My knees do tend to get a bit sore from snow plowing so much, but at least it allows me to do a bit more skiing than I get on the bunny hill.

I am really looking forward to skiing as a WHOLE family this Saturday!

Robby looks like a total stud in his ski gear

Eli showing off his harness backpack that we use.  He loves wearing his "Ninja ski mask" and it cracks me up how little you can see his face

I finally caught a picture of Miss M with BOTH skis off the ground.  She has been borrowing my poles which are much to big on the little hills.  Thank goodness we finally ordered two pairs of ski poles for our biggies that just came in the mail.

I nearly caught a picture of Robby mid air. But not quite.  Oh well, next time

Winter Break: Wednesday

Wednesday took us to the "Montshire Museum", a fun children's museum that we have yearly passes at. Maddie has gotten a little jealous as of late, of the amount of time that the boys have spent at the museum in comparison to her.  We tend to go there while she is either at gymnastics or school or friends houses.  I knew that during break this would be a great time to take her there.  I wasn't sure if the children would get bored quickly since we have been so much, but luckily I was wrong.  They have a really fun new exhibit set up about how people make things.  My kids were in heaven and could have stayed much longer than the 2-3 hours we  were there.

They were able to make parachutes out of plastic, strings, tape, index cards and pennies.  They even got to test them out by sending them over the banister to the first story.  They also spent a long time making spoons, foot prints, and other small creations out of wax, made die-cut paper boxes, die-cut 3D horses, and molded pennies.  They have all been talking constantly about these fun exhibits and when they can go back again.

 One of the fun new exhibits included building trolley cars and then taking them down a ramp and watching them smash back apart (pictured above).  Eli loved it and probably built his 5-6 times in a row

They also had an old-fashioned life size car that the kids could assemble and then take back apart.  Eli favorite part was pretending to drive the car.....even if the steering wheel wasn't even attached to the car.

Winter Break: Tuesday

 Tuesday was initially forecast to rain the entire day. What better place to spend our time than at the indoor swimming center in Hartford Vermont?!  It ended up being sunny all day long with rain showers in the evening. Nevertheless we still had a fantastic time swimming.

Another cool program out here is the "Passport to Winter Fun", which encourages children to participate in physical activity throughout the winter months.  In it you fill out a box whenever you are active for at least sixty minutes; it can be playing tag, doing gymnastics, ice skating, skiing, playing hockey, playing hide and go seek, etc. We have been diligent in filling out these booklets with Maddie and Robby.  Once you have ten boxes filled out, you get to choose a reward.  One of those was getting in free to the Aquatic Center.  Since both my children had 10 boxes filled out we happily brought our passport booklets with us and saved ourselves $14 in admission.  We are already looking forward to more rewards to come.

My children are basically little fishies in water and so we ended up staying at the aquatic center for about 2.5 hours.  The bonus was that they were so tired that evening that bed time went off without a hitch.  I love nights like that.

Eli, Robby and Maddie

*Funny note- I got asked if I had triplets while we were swimming. They are finally all hitting that stage when they are fairly close in size.  I had to laugh though, because Robby is quite a bit taller than both of the other children.  Eli is swiftly catching up to Miss M's height.  Poor girl

 Eli is completely obsessed with my camera right now and whenever he can get his hands on the camera he will snap upwards of 20-30 pictures at a time. This is one of the best ones he got of Miss M, Rubbas and I after changing back into clothes after swimming.

-being an Arizona girl, it feels almost wrong to put a heavy duty coat back on after swimming-

Winter Break: Monday

We just got finished with our annual "Winter Break" from school and then had a "No-Snow Snow Day" and so I am officially hitting catch up mode.  I was more than excited to have school back in session this week and resume normal activities, but I have to admit we had quite a bit of fun.  It was nice to return to lazy sleep-in mornings, fun craft projects, lots of skiing, and other exciting things to do. I tried to come up with one major activity to do each day and then lots of small things.  Luckily, two of my three children are home-bodies and are completely content to just hang out around the house {Miss M constantly wants to be off doing something}. Some of our fun activities included:

Monday- Skiing at the Dartmouth Skiway
Tuesday- Swimming at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center. M came to my cookie decorating RS activity
Wednesday- Montshire Museum with the Holbrook family.
Thursday- Skiing at the Dartmouth Skiway
Friday- Birthday party for Maddie/Movie Theater with the boys; Bowling with the Monteleone's.
Saturday- Skiing at the Dartmouth Skiway as a whole family {with daddy}.

I am going to highlight Monday in this post and then will do smaller versions for each of the other days, so I don't end up with a gigantic post with way lots of pictures.

My view up the J-Bar lift.  I love seeing my bigger two ahead of me on the lift looking so grown up

Mr E nestled between my skis up the hill. I have really enjoyed teaching Eli how to ski this year.  It is challenging and frustrating at times, but also incredibly rewarding. 

Not to mention CHEAPER than paying for lessons

Maddie enjoyed hiking up the hill a bit to try her hand at jumping.  She has gotten pretty comfortable on her skis and is such a risk taker in every aspect of her life

Maddie was upset that I didn't get one of her in actual mid-air during her jump.  

I tried over and over again and blamed the sun light and an old camera for this. 

{a new quality camera is on my bucket list of things I want post-grad school}