dang it. Let’s
get caught up.
Skiing—the girls are crazy little snow bunnies. They’ve been out a handful of times now and
are picking it up quickly. We’ve had
three skiing Saturdays so far. Daddy
takes one of them out in the morning for some one on one coaching. Then I show up around lunchtime to feed them
and trade kids. Meanwhile E keeps me
company and begs to go. Unfortunately,
she has to wait until next year (mostly for dad’s sanity). However, last time, E got to spend the day
cross country skiing with grandpa and loved it.
She got to have a one-on-one date with him and “ski like the big kids”.
(not quite but she was still thrilled) L
and A also got to spend a day at ski school as part of the Epic Kids Ski
program. I took them to the resort at 9
am, got them fitted with gear and found their instructors (easier said than
done but we got it figured out). And
then they spent the whole day skiing. Their
class had four students including them.
They skied through the morning, had lunch at the resort and I didn’t
pick them up until 3. Their instructor
reported that they both did great. A
more easily distracted but had fun anyway and is working on smooth turns and
using a turn to stop. L responds well to
coaching though and was even working on jumps!
My crazy kids. And now they can’t
get enough.
Road trip—we spent a long wonderful weekend with
cousins. My BIL needed to put a new roof
on his house with a quickly approaching deadline from the insurance
company. So we left early Saturday
morning and spent the drive reading, playing, snacking and watching
movies. The men got right to work and
the girls immediately dove into playing with their cousins. They spent the whole weekend playing with
toys, watching movies, reading, dancing, building forts and teasing. The weather was perfect to run loose in the
backyard and we took short field trips out for playing at the park and
shopping. They spent each night in a big
cousin bed on the floor watching a bedtime movie. I really enjoyed the time lounging
about. I wasn’t particularly useful for
roof construction (or anything else really) but I got to spend lots of time
chatting with my SIL and relaxing.
On Monday evening, the men had finished as much as they
could in our three day weekend together so we packed up. Instead of going home, we continued down the
road to Las Vegas so Husband could take care of some meetings the next day. We drove into Las Vegas to check out the
nighttime strip but didn’t stay long since traffic was a nightmare. So we settled into our hotel for the
night. The girls think that any hotel is
a great adventure and eat it up like crazy.
They love the novelty (and the Disney channel) so we explored a bit
before baths and bedtime. The next
morning we helped ourselves to the breakfast buffet and decided, much to their
dismay, that it was too cold for swimming.
(We had been hopeful since it’s Vegas and much warmer than home, but the
gray skies and impending rain scared us off).
So we drove into Vegas to drop Husband off at his meetings and then
returned to our room for more lounging, cartoons and snacks. We stayed until check out time and then did a
little shopping. We found a Disney store
outlet and browsed for awhile and had lunch.
Then we drove up and down the strip a few times, trying to see as much
as we could of the hotels and spectacular displays. (I wasn’t brave enough to actually park and
take them walking through any of them though.)
We did eventually park and make our way into the M&M store though
and had such a blast! The girls browsed
the merchandise, picking out an outfit for the baby, a present to stash for
Father’s Day and begged for souvenir M&Ms to eat. We watched the 3D movie, which E loved and
cheered and talked through nonstop, A watched completely enthralled and L
actually shied away from, not liking the 3D effect. After, we got to meet Red and take pictures
with him. We spent over an hour in the
M&M store before we left to find Husband and begin our long drive home.
L’s dance—January was a busy month for L’s dance team. With competition season quickly approaching,
she has had extra rehearsals to attend and even a few performances at a local
high school’s halftime show to get them used to performing. Her dance team, the Starlights, is doing a
military themed routine which she absolutely loves. I tend to favor the ballet and jazz while
this particular routine is more precision and hip hop. But she loves the fun, funky energy of it and
it has really challenged the girls. It’s
definitely a difficult routine and I’m glad they got to practice performing it. After the half time performance, we went out
to the local pizzeria with two friends on the team and their families. I think that especially made her night and
she had such a blast. She’s also in a
second competition routine, with the Starlights plus two other teams (different
age groups), for “mini production”. It’s
danced to a song from Rio and the
girls are dressed like colorful, tropical, unbelievably cute birds. They also preformed both routines at the
company showcase in January, which is done at the high school auditorium. It doubles as a first performance experience
for the girls and a “reveal” to all the parents and families that support the
girls. We got there earlier enough to
have great seats and even little sisters loved watching the routines (E
provided hilarious commentary about her favorites that we had to laughingly
shush.) Competition season was really
hard on her last year and she struggled with feeling like she had no play
time. I worried she was over scheduled but
having two neighborhood friends on the team this year has made a big
difference. She loves it and goes
eagerly to practices, I’m so proud of my sweet little spunky dancer.
Swim date with cousins—One of the girls’ longtime favorite
activities is going swimming. The community
pool is amazing with waterslides and a play area. So we had a fantastic cousin weekend,
starting with the dance showcase. Grammy
picked up Mimi, one of the cousins that L is especially close to, and joined us
at the dance showcase. Then we had a
late dinner and dessert before crashing for the night. In the morning, Husband took L and Mimi ice
fishing (not much success but they had fun).
Then we were joined by my brother and his family with lots more cousins
to play with. We met them at the
swimming pool where the kids eagerly dove in and made rounds of the slides and
hot tubs and obstacle course. Once
everyone had their fill, we met back at our house for dinner. The kids ate really well, especially for a
soup bar and I was proud of them for trying new things (doesn’t always go so
well at big family events) and we settled in for gourmet popcorn and a
movie. Unfortunately the power went out
halfway through, which was met with plenty of drama and rather
entertaining. So even though our evening
got cut short, it was such a great weekend.
A’s art—A is taking art again, well into another session and
loving it. She’s moved into an older
class which I think has been a great way to challenge her and having tons of
fun. Her projects usually take 1-2 weeks
and are always very bright and energetic.
L’s piano—Asides from dance, L continues in piano lessons as
well. It makes her Monday schedule very
busy and often exhausting but I’m proud of the way she keeps up. Her favorite is jazz and she’s learned
increasingly complicated pieces that really give her the chance to get into
it. My favorite is still the classical
pieces, which she picks up easily. She
has applied for an upcoming music festival, despite the timing of dance performances
and baby’s arrival. March is going to be
VERY busy but I think it will be a great experience to compete and be adjudicated. In addition to the assignments from her
class, she’s working on an additional song for an upcoming special occasion and
is bursting with excitement about it.
She gave Grammy a preview and was a little concerned when it moved her
to tears! The official unveiling won’t
been for a few more weeks but will be such a sweet and special occasion.
L’s swimming—L has also begun swimming lessons once a week
as part of the school’s PE program. I
was more nervous than she was, since it involves being bussed over to the
intermediate school and juggling swim gear and changing clothes, etc. But of course everything is fine and I think
she looks at it as playtime, more than PE class. I imagine this is especially because she’s had
swim lessons for the past four summers so my girls are already strong
swimmers.
Baby update—Baby is doing great. We had a particularly rough weekend with
frequent and increasingly intense contractions.
(Sundays are the hardest, especially because church is right during my
usual “rest” time so I’m sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs instead of
laying down, usually don’t drink enough water and because our building is
obnoxiously hot by the third block.) So
during one particularly rough Sunday, I had a definite increase in contractions. I assumed they were Braxton Hicks, like I’ve
had so much with each pregnancy. But
after two days, I started spotting.
After a quick call to the doc looking for reassurance, he had me come
in, get checked and concluded “things were starting to move along”. But since I
was only 29 weeks, I’ve had to cut back on all my activities and be much more
careful to avoid going into true labor.
So much to my dismay, no more exercising (I was hoping to teach another
week or two at that point and then hopefully take classes without teaching for
a few more weeks after that). I still
teach my water aerobics class but only because I can stand poolside and coach them
without exerting myself at all. I miss
being at the gym, especially for the satisfaction of a good workout and for the
socializing. But I’m using the extra
time to do some decluttering and organizing and cleaning at home. I still have a particularly rough evening
about once a week or so (with regular contractions) and my girls are really
good about giving me time to lay down and bringing me water. Fortunately, we haven’t had any more fire
drills or trips to the hospital to stop labor.
I have to make it to March at the minimum, especially since our hospital
doesn’t have a NICU. So if I go into
labor too early, we would most likely be transferred to another hospital. More baby stuff later.
Library—one of the girls favorite activities is to go to the
library. (yep, big nerds. I love it.)
I can actually bribe them to do extra chores with a promised trip to the
library. The library here has a
fantastic reading wall with little nooks in it.
So they pick out books and curl up to read or they play on the
computer. We’ve also been more dedicated
in our nightly reading lately. The girls
were given a copy of Little House in the
Big Woods for Christmas and we started reading a chapter every night. Once we finished, we checked the second book
out of the library and our whole little family is thoroughly enjoying it. Somewhere in my parents’ storage is a very
old, yellow box set that my great grandma gave to my grandma who gave to
me. So I’ve held off buying and we just borrow
for now until that precious treasure surfaces.
Grandma day—Also in January was the one year anniversary of
Grandma’s passing, followed shortly by Grandma’s birthday. We had a special dinner and visited the cemetery. L in particular still has occasional rough
moments and we’ve really embraced the idea that Grandma is now our angel to
watch over them. I finished the “Grandma
bears” with my sister's help, sweet little teddy bears made from Grandma’s pajamas, and sent them to
each of Grandma’s siblings and gave them to our girls. It was very healing for me to do this and I
think has been a great comfort to L as well.
It’s hard, but we’re doing ok.
