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!

A bead that will go down in history...

Yesterday I cleaned out our junk cabinet. Yes, most people have a junk drawer. We have one of those too, but we also have a junk cabinet. It's right above the junk drawer, which is right below the junk countertop. It's slightly more dangerous than the average persons junk drawer since it is always possible to open the cabinet and have a bottle of glue or something crash onto your head. So, I was cleaning out the cabinet and found that most of the cabinet junk was the girl's collection of arts and crafts supplies. Once the girls discovered the newly appointed craft supply box, the rest of the day was spent crafting, of course.

First up, glittered pine cone ornaments, then glittered kitchen table, followed by glittered kitchen rug. Then some cutting and gluing, some pipe cleaner thingys, and then beaded bracelets. Everything was going great until Olivia piped up, "There's a bead in my nose!". At first Tim didn't believe her, but a quick exam with a flashlight showed a shiny booger covered pink bead way up there.

First we tried to suck it out with one of the 5 baby booger suckers that I had found in the junk cabinet...no luck. Then Olivia tried to blow it out, no luck. Then steady hand Momma got the tweezers and after two tries kinda pushed it up a little further. Tim wanted a go at the tweezers but I was too freaked out to let him and threw the tweezers across the room, yelling "We're done! We're going to the ER!"

On the way there we wanted to try and make sure that there was only one bead in there. Olivia confirmed this by saying, " My nose is just a one bead nose." I don't know, maybe she tried to put another one in there and it just wasn't working out, who knows.

Well, 10 minutes in the waiting room, followed by 20 minutes in an exam and I decided that it might just work if Olivia jumped up and down to try and get the bead out. Tim wasn't excited about this idea, but Olivia was. I think it was probably a good thing that Olivia has a little cold right now and so boogers were starting to build up some amount of pressure behind the bead. Just enough pressure, along with the jumping, and a little blowing of her nose and out popped the bead! Right into my hand! All covered with baby boogers! Yuck! But, at least it wasn't in her nose anymore....

Oh, Christmas Tree!

The day after Thanksgiving, we drove up into the mountains to find the perfect Christmas tree. Tim and I spent about 30 minutes hiking around looking for the best tree possible, while the girls spent their time collecting pine cones and juniper berries. Final we happened upon a clump of decent looking trees. Since we all were running low on pocket space for pine cones, we decided that one of these trees was going to have to suck it up and be the best Christmas tree it could be.