Monday, January 31, 2011

Odds and Ends, but Mostly Odd

  • Harper tried squished up carrots for the first time tonight, and other than one or two convulsions and a few poop faces, he did really well.
  • Every week, Landon has to read a book and then choose a question from a list to answer. The questions are like “What do you admire about your character” or “If this story was 100 years earlier, how would it be different” or “Write a journal entry as if you were the main character in your book”. He has to write at least 10 “4th grade” sentences to answer the question of his choice and hand the paper in on Friday. It is what I imagine hell to be like to help him with this assignment. Plain torture.
  • Zoe starts drivers-ed/lessons tomorrow. I can’t believe she may actually drive on her own one day. I hate the thought of it and it isn’t because I think she’s a bad driver, I’m just afraid she’ll never come back once she leaves.
  • I’m an “everything in it’s place” kind of person. Tony is not. He leaves his pajamas on the floor instead of putting them in the drawer. He puts his shoes next to the basket in the entryway, not in it. He puts his keys on the shelf above the basket for keys. But he does hang his coat up and make dinner every night, so he’s not all bad.
  • Zoe took a picture of me yesterday but only because I asked her to. I hate having my picture taken, but I needed one for something that I don’t want to talk about right now.

Here’s the picture:

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Here it is in black and white:

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  • I like the black and white one slightly better, but I don’t know why.
  • I almost photo shopped that mole off of my collarbone because I hate it. Then I got lazy and didn’t. But, I think I’m going to call my dermatologist tomorrow and talk to her about cutting it off…then I won’t have to be lazy because it’ll be gone. But, I hate getting moles removed because moles are gross and it seems strange to think of someone holding my mole after they’ve cut it off. Ew. So, maybe I won’t call my dermatologist.
  • Before I forget, Harper went to bed last night at 7pm and didn’t wake up until 5:30am. It was glorious.
  • Zoe can tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk with just one sip. It’s strange but true; I tested her.
  • I hate it when people in my family wear socks with holes in them. If I catch you, I will put my finger in the hole and rip it as big as I can just so that you can’t wear them again. Tony really hates when I do that…but I hate when his shoes are next to the basket. So, we’re even.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

First Snow of 2011

The tree in our front yard, completely covered in snow. This was taken around 10:30pm while it was still snowing.

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The deck and backyard the following morning.

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The front yard the following morning.

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Hitting the Slopes

The last day of our mini vacation was spent at the ski lodge. Well, for Tony, Harper and I anyways…the three older kids were busy skiing and snowboarding. Landon decided that he wanted to learn some snowboarding skills so we signed him up for a 4 hour lesson. It turns out that learning to snowboard takes more than one 4 hour session; but I’m not sure a week would have been enough! Snowboarding is tough!

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And because Nicole had never been skiing and Zoe hadn’t been in years we signed them up for lessons as well. They had 2 hours of lessons and got really lucky because no one else was in their group!  Zoe and Nicole caught on pretty quick and before we knew it they were riding the ski lifts all over and having a great time on the slopes.

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That wraps up Zoe’s birthday weekend. I sure hope it was everything she wanted it to be!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Totally Tubular!

Bet you can guess where they’re going.

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Unless you decoded my title/hidden message.

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The minute the kids saw the tubing hill, they were ready to get out there. The tickets are a bit pricey at $24 for 2 hours, but what the heck, right? Unfortunately the only way to the top of the hill is to ride the conveyor belt that goes approximately 1 mile an hour.

The rules of the belt are:

  • Get on.
  • Stand completely still, walking while in motion is forbidden.
  • Ride upwards to top.
  • Get off.

Because the belt is so sluggish the kids only got to ride down about 5 times in the two hours they were there. And for some strange reason the employee’s decided it was ok to blow snow directly on people as they were tubing down the hill. Landon informed me that it was very unpleasant to get a face full of snow on the 90 mile an hour ride down the slope. But what does he know?

The kids ended up having a good time nonetheless and only quit because they had to.

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Room with a View

I just had to get some pictures of our view this weekend.

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We are way up on the mountain this time.

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The only way this would be prettier is if it were covered in snow.

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Here’s the view at night. All the white stuff is snow, hehe, and it happens to be the bottom of one of the slopes and the snow tubing area.

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So, so pretty. If only the whole resort was snowy…

Visiting the Waterpark

Since we are already at Massanutten and all, we decided to take the kids to the waterpark. Instead of trying to go for the entire day with Harper, we opted for the 5pm-close time frame instead. It’s considerably cheaper and still plenty of time to enjoy the park.

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While Zoe, Landon and Nicole enjoyed themselves, Harper wasn’t so sure about it. Since the waterpark is all indoors, it’s very loud and it took him quite awhile to get used to it.

It even made him make his pouty face, which is (in my opinion) the cutest thing ever!

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But then Tony showed him around and he was fine.

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Until we put him in the water…

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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Racquetball

To kill a little time yesterday afternoon I took the kids out for a game of racquetball.

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To say the least, it was interesting. I think that if we were the first people to ever play racquetball and someone had to give it a name, it wouldn’t have been racquetball. It would have been something like “hit the ball and duck” or “look out!”.

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I think every one of us got hit with the ball at some point, but I’m pretty sure I got the worst of it when the ball bounced off the wall and slammed me in the side of my head! It’s funny now, but at the time, it was pretty painful!

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All and all we had a good time, but I don’t think it’s a sport I’ll be taking up anytime soon. It’s just way too dangerous! LOL!

Zoe’s Sweet 16 (Finally!)

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A little more than a year ago I asked Zoe what she wanted to do for her Sweet 16 birthday party and she told me that she’d like to take one friend and go skiing instead of having a party with a bunch of people. Because December is just so incredibly busy for all of us, we waited until now to take her on her trip.

So, here we are, enjoying a little mini-vacation at Massanutten resort in Virginia. We’ve owned time share here since 1997 (I think) and we visit quite often. Normally we come in the summer, but we have been here a few times in the winter, for skiing and tubing.

We left our house when the kids got off the bus on Friday and made it here at about 5pm. That night all we did was grab some food at Woodstone Deli, and then came back to the room to play a round of Scribblish, which was hilarious as usual!

Saturday morning we made the kiddo’s get up so that we could eat breakfast at the Thunderbird CafĂ©. It’s freezing cold up here in the mountains, so we all got mugs of hot cocoa which really hit the spot!

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This is Nicole, the friend that Zoe decided to bring along.

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And, this is about as happy as Landon gets in the morning.

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The restaurant has an old diner feel to it, but updated…know what I mean? There’s a long bar where you can sit and sip your coffee, or huge booths that easily accommodate 6-8 people. There are also little stars hanging from the entryway…and those caught Harper eye, so Tony let him play with them a little while we were waiting on our food.

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After breakfast we headed out to Wal-Mart to get a few necessities like frozen pizza and Cap’n Crunch and to search for some ski pants for Zoe. We looked at Target, Wal-Mart, and Kohls before finally seeing a big sign that said SKI on it. There were several pairs of ski pants to choose from…if you didn’t mind forking out $150-$200 for them! Luckily we found a clearance rack with a pair that fit her perfectly, and for $29.99, they were ours! Once we finally made it back to the resort, I took the kids over to the club for some racquetball…but that’s another post!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Bored? Play a Game!

We are a board game playing family.

We always have been.

For Christmas this year we picked up two new games, Funglish and Scribblish.

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We’ve played both and they’re both pretty fun. In Funglish, one person draws a card with a list of words on it. They then try to get everyone else to guess what their word is by placing descriptive words on a board under the headings Definitely, Kind of or Not.

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So, for example, if you pull the word eagle you could put the word flying on the Definitely space or Human on the Not space…get it?

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While Funglish is fun, Scribblish is hilarious. It is basically the telephone game (you know the one where you whisper “I ate a hot dog for breakfast” in someone’s ear but by the time it makes it around an entire group of people you get something like “I met a frog princess”) on paper. I won’t go into great detail about how to play this game (because I don’t even know where to begin to explain!) but I will tell you that the two times we’ve played it I laughed myself to tears!

Both games are awesome because we can all play them and everyone gets it. Neither are too hard for Landon or too babyish for Zoe. The other great thing about them is that neither of them are so taxing that we can’t also entertain Harper at the same time.

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And he appreciates that.

Monday, January 17, 2011

December Daily, Days 21-25

Day 21, Harper enjoying the lights.

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Day 22, Symphony of Lights.

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Day 23, holiday cookies!

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Day 24, Christmas Eve.

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Day 25, Christmas morning.

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That’s it until next year! Thanks for looking!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Lea turns 1!

Last night we all went over to my brother-in-law’s house to celebrate Lea’s first birthday. She was a little under the weather, hence the rosy red cheeks. We still had a good time though, and she was cute as ever!

Landon in party mode:

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Harper wondering what in the world is on his head:

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Harper and Lea getting to know one another:

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Zoe and Lauren helping Lea open gifts:

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Lea versus the cupcake:

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The cupcake lost:

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April Fools Pranks

The two little kids made me laugh yesterday morning.  I was upstairs getting things ready for school when I heard them talking about how ...