Ski Bums

Last weekend we stayed on the magic carpet, but this week we hit the lift! I'm not biased at all when I say that my girls totally rocked the bunny hill. Annie has finally gotten the hang of turning and as soon as she figures out how to really stop then I'll feel comfortable letting go of her reins. Olivia is still loving just cruising down, straight down, and fast. She did a few runs before her emotions got the better of her. Tim headed to the lodge with her where she promptly fell asleep. Annie and I took a few more runs and continued working on her turns and skiing in control. The last run we took, we headed into some trees, which Annie thought was a great idea. We came out of the trees facing a pretty big drop off, but Annie handled it well. We tried to go off some sweet jumps, but never really got up enough speed....next time, it's all ours!

Ski Day!

This morning we set Annie up in a 2 hour ski lesson at Echo Mountain which is not too far from Denver. Olivia is too young to be in a lesson, but we brought skis along for her to try out with Tim and I. We got Annie all settled into her class, and Olivia started to cry about how she didn't want to go skiing! So we sat in the lodge and watched Annie and the rest of her class. She is doing much better this year than last year and made it down the hill more than a few times without crashing. Halfway through her lesson the class came into the lodge to warm up with hot cocoa. After they went back out, Olivia got a burst of confidence and decided that she wanted to ski too! So we jumped on it and scrambled out to the hill so she wouldn't have time to change her mind. Let me just say that she totally rocked. She did so much better than we were ever expecting and she loved every minute! We stopped after about an hour to grab some lunch and I was sure everyone was done for the day, but both Annie and Olivia wanted to go out for more. Annie spent the rest of the day working on turning, an I think she has finally figured it out. We promised to take her up to Copper next weekend to ride on the lift which is what she was really hoping to do today. Olivia did great too, really good balance and maybe she did some turns, or that might have just been luck. She kept trying to push Tim away from her, she really wanted to go down on her own. Here she is in action, just push play!

Forgot to mention...

Annie and I stayed up on New Years Eve with her cousins Luke and Kyle. A few minutes until midnight the television started showing the mass of people in Times Square, and I said to Annie, "Can you believe it? All those people stayed up late to celebrate your birthday!"

Silence, followed by "How do all those people know about me??"

I got the feeling she was a bit weird-ed out by the whole thing, so I told her they were really there for the start of the new year. Then I couldn't help but get the feeling that she was a little disappointment by that news.

Annie's 5!

Annie is FIVE! I'm at a loss for words.....just kidding! The years are just flying by. I think even she thinks they are flying by. Every once in a while she will start to say something along the lines of, "soon I'm going to be 10, and I'll have to drive to shop at the stores all day long" or "soon I'll be 9 and I'll need my own house. Can we find a house for me just around the corner from you so I can always live close to you?"

Anyways, what a year for Annie! First jump off the diving board, first trip to South Dakota, milked a cow, upgraded to a bigger bike, took some ski lessons, panned for gold, learned all of her sounds (first step to reading!), started playing soccer, the list could go on and on, she is one adventurous girl.

This year her love of art really started to shine. Last year she was just drawing...well, nothing too interesting to most people, but this year, she wrote and illustrated a book on the subject of cleaning! Just last week she made a picture book of the seasons, my favorite was her depiction of summer - her wearing a bathing suit, barefooted. She drew each toe, complete with toenails. Super sweet! Here is my favorite piece, titled "Green Devil". She drew this one for Halloween.
She is also very affectionate and loving. She loves to snuggle with me at bedtime, and she always crawls into my bed in the morning for some more snuggling before getting up for the day. On the other hand she also can have a raging temper...wonder where that comes from...she can really let loose if something isn't going her way.

She is working hard at school on learning to read and starting to do a little work in the math area too, counting by 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's...etc. Most of her time is spent in the art area, so much time that sometimes I feel like I should be buying extra paper for the class to make up for how much she uses. She is a very creative and imaginative girl. Just this evening she decided her stuffed cat needed a bed to sleep on so she got into my box of fabric and started at it. I helped her finish it and now Ms. Picklepants has a new bed to sleep in.

I wonder what is in store for her this year...all good things, I'm sure!

Olivia and Her Rotten Ear

Yesterday, Olivia woke up from her nap screaming, and wanting her new favorite person, me!, Momma!. Poor girl, went I picked her up from daycare she said her ear hurt but other than that she seemed fine, so we went home and I gave her some Tylenol. This morning she woke up with a sore ear again, but an hour later she said she was feeling good. So, we packed up and headed to school. On the way there my mom instincts kicked in and I decided we'd better get this ear checked out. Olivia has a history of having ear infections and not letting anyone know about them. So we dropped Annie off and stopped by my office to make an appointment. Our appointment was scheduled for 11, so we had some time to mess around at the office. First I set Olivia up with some office supplies, highlighters, post-it notes and the back of last months calendar page. She started right in working away at a pretty cool mixed media art project. After a bit, I asked if she needed to go potty. It took some convincing to get her to believe that no one would come and finish her work for her while we were gone, but eventually we made it to the bathroom. Olivia has been accident free since, oh wait, last night. Well, she is working on it! Afterwards, she raided an ex-coworkers office and came out with a new toy truck and a slinky...then she asked me why we had toys at our work. As we were leaving she told me she thought we were in outer space. We're only on the 3rd floor, but when you think about it that is pretty high up for Olivia! Then she really enjoyed yelling and hearing her echo in the parking garage.

Olivia truly out-shined her sister at the doctor's. We had Annie's 5 year checkup last week and...well, it was so bad that they had to call in extra nurses to get her out from behind the exam table and hold her down for her one shot. I asked Olivia if she was afraid to get a shot, and she laughed and said "No...they just tickle!" Once the doctor showed up, she wanted to sit up on the table by herself and she did everything the doctor asked. What a champ! So, end of the story, she has an ear infection and her ear drum ruptured, probably yesterday. But a few drugs should take care of that in no time. In the meantime, I'm just waiting for her next checkup, to see if those shots really are just going to tickle.

Mac and Peas, and Other Craziness

Olivia is obsessed with mac and cheese. She requests it for just about every meal possible. I gave in this morning at breakfast and let her have some that was left over from the day before. Now she wants it for dinner. We had a little talk this afternoon during our drive home from picking up fish to replace the ones that Tim killed. The talk was about how you should do everything in moderation. I'm not sure she is sure she knows what that means. I explained that maybe we should back down to mac and cheese only 2 or 3 times per week, and maybe I'd let her have it more often if I could add some peas in with the mac and not have to listen to her whine about not liking it. She chattered away saying, "ok, ok, I like peas, yummm peas, peas, peas, mac and peas, mac and peas." We'll see just how much she likes this new mac and peas....

Now onto other craziness.

Friday night we were driving home from a nice dinner with our friends, the Tepens. Olivia was chattering away in the back seat. She does that a lot while we are driving...I think it is her thinking chair. So all of the sudden she asks, "Do you know what a portura is?" Of course no one does, I thought it might be something she learned in Spanish class, so she goes on to say "It's when you do this and then take it like that, and then that, and that is a portura." The whole time she is talking she is making all these hand gestures like they are going to clear up any confusion about what a 'portura' is. After that she asks if we know what a 'cortura' is...same explanation and hand gestures. I whisper to Tim, "I think I have a new blog, and it's going to be called "She's crazy". Then we hear Olivia whisper back, "Hey, I'm not crazy." You gotta love her!

It's snowing like crazy here. I starting to think that tomorrow will be the first snow day of the year!