Skiing with the girls

The four of us all crammed in together for a lift selfie! 

A few weeks ago we were able to take the girls on a long-awaited event: their first ski trip! When we went to Aspen in December we had promised the kids that we would start the (long and expensive!) process of teaching everyone to ski. I have to say that I was initially a little torn about this, because skiing has always been such an escape from the real world with my dear husband, but at the same time we both love skiing soooo much that we want it to eventually be a family event. Luckily we're within striking distance of some pretty decent Midwest resorts (for this trip we went to Boyne Highlands and Nubs' Nob) that were perfect for the girls' introduction to the most blissful sport on earth.

As much as I love skiing with just Neil, I must say that taking the girls with us brought my love of skiing to a whole new level. Nothing like watching your babies zooming down a hill laughing with joy to bring tears to your mother eyes and make you feel like this very moment is the most amazing one ever!!

So--the things I don't want to forget about this trip:

1) How incredibly excited the girls were for time with just us. We've done this sort of thing in the past with them when we went to Kings' Island, and it is so fun to be able to really enjoy our witty, fun, talented older children on a more individual basis. We had some great conversations during the 8 hours that we were in the car with just the girls (and oh, those 8 hours were sooo peaceful compared to the 6 we spent with all 5 kiddos that weekend!). So so so grateful to my parents, who offered to watch our boys so that we could do this!!

2) Ski school is worth it! We hemmed and hawed over this but signed the girls up for a full day of ski school the first day. When we got to the hill we realized that we still had half an hour to kill before the ski school started, so we were like, awesome, let's take them up for their first run!

You guys, it was soooo awful! It took us half an hour to get them down and Neil basically carried them most of the way. I was terrified that we'd made them hate skiing forever! The ski school people were great and taught them all sorts of things I didn't even think of, like how to just move around in skis (duh), plus they had this whole huge learning area with magic carpets and cool cones and obstacles and things that weren't available on the actual bunny hill. They spent most of the day in the special not-as-steep ski school area before they moved on to the hill that we'd dumped them on in the morning (oops!). (With that said, Abigail didn't like her instructor and ended up skiing with us for most of the second lesson of the day. Oh well...it was good for her in the morning and Jooj loved it all day.)

3) How fast the girls picked it up and how characteristic of their personalities their individual learning actually was. On the second day I was really worried that Abs would be skiing totally different stuff while Jules would be on the bunny hill all day, since Abigail and I did three runs while Jules was still working her way down her first run. But then I took Abigail down a run that she hated (full disclosure: I totally thought it was a beginner run but actually it was an intermediate run, so she was justified in being upset; the signage wasn't very clear and I think the liftie misunderstood when I asked him whether it was green or blue) and she took her skis off and insisted on walking the rest of the way down, and didn't want to ski with me anymore. So I took Jules and Neil took Abs, which turned out to be the perfect pairing, since Neil is way more patient than I am and frankly is a better teacher since he knows more of what he's doing. Abigail really wanted to stick with the snowplow, which was where she felt comfortable, and it was kind of driving me crazy that she wouldn't try the other things I was trying to teach her, but Neil is so good and patient with that and was able to help her to learn and progress in the way that is best for her.

Juliet, on the other hand, is an interesting combination of trusting and a total daredevil, so I would say, "Okay, you did that run twice. Now let's do this one that's just a little bit harder," and Jules would say, "Okay, let's go!"  Juliet didn't care quite so much about being in control and fell quite a bit at first, but got super fast and was willing to learn the hockey stop, got pretty dang fast on her parallel turns, and was keeping her skis parallel and using her body weight/hockey stop to navigate the hill. Jules did really well with ski school and with me since she was willing to try whatever the instructor or I said; Abigail learned best with Neil. (Thank heavens that there are going to be two of us around when these girls are teenagers.) Both of them were zipping down all of the intermediate runs by mid-morning on the second day, and we spent the rest of the day trying to ski every single intermediate run at Nubs' Nob (we didn't hit them all, but we came close! The girls found a couple of lifts with access to half a dozen runs that they really loved, so we spent a couple of hours there). I love the varied terrain and longer runs at Nubs, soooo much better than Boyne, IMHO.

4) Letting go and letting the girls do things on their own. Neil and I were switching off once we got to the backside of the mountain so that one of us would ski down the intermediate runs with the girls while the other of us hit the double-black glade skiing, and at one point I got to the lift and was like, oh my gosh, where are the girls? and Neil told me that they were already on the lift. That was pretty terrifying for me watching my little babies ride a ski lift ALL BY THEMSELVES but they loved it so, so, so much and were just thrilled beyond belief at being able to do that together. Near the end of the second day, they finally talked us into letting them go down one specific run on their own while we went down another way (it was a run we'd skied half a dozen times with them and was pretty heavily patrolled by ski patrol) and oh man oh man, I could not believe that we actually let them do it--but it was by far the highlight of their day and really brought home to me the fact that they ARE growing up and moving away from me and doing their own thing, and that it's okay to be simultaneously proud and terrified about that fact.

5) On that note, the girls progressed SO fast that what I had anticipated would be kind of a babysitting on the bunny hill trip ended up being full of really good skiing for us too! I spent quite a few runs working on my parallel turns so that I could ski through the glades (I felt really good about my skills until Neil and I skied the glades together...then I made him go ahead so he couldn't watch how slow I was in comparison! He is so so so fast and my jump turns are still kind of nonexistent), and there were some pretty good black diamonds that were steep enough and icy enough to be challenging and adrenaline-pumping! Especially for poor Jooj who accidentally went down a black diamond run that joined onto the blue run we were all skiing together...she stayed up the whole way down until she got to the lift and then fell over in a little heap because she said her legs were shaking so hard she couldn't stay up anymore. She cried all the way up the lift, but man, you should have heard her telling EVERYONE later about her black diamond run. :-) Kind of like when I skied Honeycomb Canyon the fourth time I'd ever been on skis (okay, mostly I cried and slid over moguls).

6) It was soooo cold! We had everyone totally bundled up but we would routinely get off the lifts and have to shake the accumulated snow off of us. We were worried that the kids would get so cold on the lifts that they would freeze up on the hill, so Neil brought along a bag of Sour Patch kids and made the lifts this big game where he would adopt a very strong German accent and ask the girls, who he named Helga and Irina, if they wanted any "small sour children." They loved it and would just laugh and laugh and do their best to imitate his accent and tell him, "Ja, bitte!"

And so while it was a wonderful and awesome two days and I could spend hours writing a blow-by-blow of the trip, what I remember most and what I want to hang on to was the shared euphoria of the slopes together, where we were falling down, getting up, and sailing over the snow. There's no pastime I love so much in this very deep, visceral way as I love skiing (running comes closest and it's still a poor comparison) and getting to share that with my daughters and seeing their faces just light up with the joy of skiing and hearing them talk about it nonstop--such a gift. So grateful we could go, and looking forward to sharing this with my children for the rest of their lives.

February 15

1) My cute boys curled up together after church in their matching bow ties from Elise & Paxton's wedding, Isaac is reading SO well now and Luke is taking full advantage. :-)

2) I taught a lesson somewhat last-minute in church today and as always walked out thinking how grateful I am for stellar class participation! It makes all the difference and I am so glad to live in a ward where we have such thoughtful, compassionate, Christ-centered ward members (one kind of funny thing from today is that there's a guy in our ward now that I went to BYU with back in the day--we started out taking a two-semester physics class together our freshman year, then he went on his mission, and then when he came back and took the second half of the class I was now the TA. So when he answered a question today in class my brain just automatically rocketed us back ten years to TA sessions and I wrote his answer up on the board using some physics shorthand before I realized what I was doing--hah!)

3) I tweaked something in my back yesterday and totally did not sleep well last night at all--I was in a lot of pain earlier today and had trouble standing/sitting/etc. because my lower back was just this mass of pain. Neil gave me an awesome back rub when we got home from church and then told me to go to sleep. I slept for the next three hours and woke up when Jules came in to tell me dinner was ready--an awesome sweet & sour pork dish that Neil had made with the kids. Neil makes dinner most Sundays and I love it!

4) It's 6:44 PM as I type this and the dishwasher is running, the kitchen is beautifully clean after dinner, everything is picked up and vacuumed, lunches are packed for tomorrow, and the older kids are all changed into their pajamas and playing quietly with Legos. All of this is possible because Neil took Nathan when he went hometeaching. :-)

5) Natie lost one of my contacts a few months (okay like four) ago and I still haven't gotten around to replacing it--occasionally I wear a really old scratched-up one that makes my eye hurt but mostly I wear my glasses. I don't really love wearing glasses because I feel sort of frumpy in them (I think everyone else looks stylish and classy in theirs but I never feel that way) and so today I decided to just wear my contacts because I was tired of feeling frumpy and little tender mercy, I was able to wear them all day without my eye going ballistic and tearing up. Nothing big but something that made today nice.

Happy Valentine's Day!

1) This picture is a couple of weeks old, but tonight I made challah bread again in response to Juliet's pleas--I really enjoy making it because the finished product is so beautiful (yesterday, however, our house was cold enough that the dough wasn't super stretchy, so I experimentally tried braiding only one loaf and then rolling the other like a baguette. It split open during cooking and was basically 8 inches across, so...braid it). I like this recipe and I sub in a couple of cups of WW flour for the white (I've discovered that you can't go much past that because the WW dough just isn't stretchy enough and doesn't roll up well). This is a good tutorialhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_MgnEZLB5A for the braiding part.

2) As Neil and I were lounging in bed this morning discussing our plans for the day (Valentine's Day on Saturday = sleeping in until 8!! Thanks, Natie!) the older four came in with these signs:

3) After we did all our Saturday chores, we left our sparkling-clean house and went to the library, where we checked out 106 books and Nathan screamed hysterically when the ceiling sculpture turned on. Hmm, this is a fun phase...

4) After we put the kids to bed, I kissed Neil goodbye as he headed out to work and thought mournfully about spending Valentine's alone by myself while he was at the lab. I curled up with his WWI history and busied myself with feeling glum while I read about troop movements, and then I heard the garage door going up and was like...what? Did he forget his laptop? And in came my dear husband with a gorgeous potted lily (I told him earlier in the week that I'd already bought myself flowers so he was off the hook, but he knows how much I love plantable gifts!) and told me that he'd been planning all day to spend the evening together and just told me he was going to work because he hadn't had a chance to get flowers the day before. Sneaky sneaky.

5) So we spent the evening curled up together on the couch in front of the fire reading our respective books and just enjoying some quiet time together. Good times.

February 13th

Missed yesterday! So doubling up today.

1) Last month, as I mentioned previously, I worked a ton of hours and brought in some unanticipated extra income. Neil and I were discussing putting a substantial portion of it towards something we'd been wanting for a couple of years, but it wasn't actually a need, and I was having a hard time pulling the trigger on it because it just seemed like so much money to spend on something that I wasn't dying without--we'd decided weeks earlier to go ahead and yet I still had to make the purchase. Then this week we recognized that someone else we knew really needed that money and we gave it to them instead, and I was just so, so, so grateful for the opportunity to let the Lord work through me to bless someone else. I definitely felt like it was the Lord's money and not mine, and had a very strong confirmation that it was intended to go to this particular person and that we were just the conduit.

2) I've run four days in a row this week and my plantar fascia are not killing me! Yippee!! This is so huge and I am totally crediting glucosamine chondroitin with the improvement (that's one of the side benefits of running with a friend who has a Ph.D. in nursing!).

3) Yesterday I hosted book group. I was super super stressed about it beforehand and it was SUCH a relief to actually just get to the time and be able to focus on enjoying the company of my friends instead of stressing about the cleanliness of my house and tastiness of the food (I will say, however, that I thought the food was pretty awesome--I made a flourless chocolate torte, a lemon poppyseed cake with fresh lemon glaze, this decadent cranberry salad (the only thing I've ever made with mini marshmallows, but they are just perfect in it because they sort of melt in), fresh hummus with carrots, peppers, and sugar snap peas, and then I baked baguettes during our discussion and served them hot with Brie). Yum yum yum.

4) Book group again because it was so nice to talk with friends for five hours. :-)

5) Tonight was "Greece Night" (one of the things we're doing as a family this year is researching one country each month and then eating at a restaurant serving that country's cuisine. Everyone has to present at least one fact they learned about that country during the course of the meal. Our original plan was just to cook the meals at home and then I came to my senses and realized hey wait, this is going to be sooooo much more enjoyable if I don't have to cook 10 different things to give everyone a sense of the regional cuisine). So we went to a local Greek restaurant and dazzled each other with our knowledge of Greek geography, culture, history, and cuisine, and two of our five kids ate everything on their plates, two of them at least tried everything on their plates, and Nathan did whatever it is that he did where I don't actually know how much he ate so he had toast and a fried egg when we got home. Anyway--we ordered saganaki, which they flamed at our table while the waiter was yelling "OPA!" and Nathan screamed SO LOUDLY when he saw the flame spurt that we all started laughing and made him cry even more. (I felt kind of bad for the couple at the next table, because they just flamed theirs in the kitchen, which frankly I think is kind of a rip-off, but they didn't seem to mind, so...)

6) Jules had about a thousand kilowatts of excess energy, so I made the last hour before bedtime tonight into a whole bunch of family games. We divided up into teams (the Poopsies and the BrainCrushers...guess who picked those names) and competed with SO MUCH ENERGY in the Lincoln Log Challenge (your team gets a point for building a Lincoln Log tower higher than 15 logs high before Nate knocks it over), the human wheelbarrow race, jumping and leapfrog contests, and wound up taking turns dancing around wearing a baggie full of pom-poms tied to our waists with a small hole cut in the side--basically the point is that you have to jump around a wiggle like crazy to get all the pom-poms to fall out. I wish I'd taken a video of both Neil and Nathan's turns. Too great!

7) Luke had a playgroup this morning and I loved getting the chance to chat with my friends while the kiddos played. Always so restorative!

8) I got to talk on the phone today with one of my dear dear friends who moved away last year. I miss her so much and it was wonderful to talk with her!!

9) Today I made a couple of quick stops at the homes of people I've been thinking about lately. I didn't do anything major, but I gave them some little gifts and it was such a good reminder to me that I am happiest when I am reaching out to those around me and letting them know that I care about them.

10) I spent half an hour singing to and rubbing the back of the child with whom I have been knocking heads most frequently lately. It was a good time for both of us to connect and remember that we really do love each other underneath all of the differences of opinion. :-)

February 11th

Good day for this exercise, since man oh man were Neil and I both knocking heads with a particular child tonight. I was soooo glad when it was bedtime. It's one of those things where they're behaving in a way that is ultimately destructive, and you can see it because you're the parent, but the child completely refuses to believe that you know what you're talking about. Fun times.

1) I filed all our taxes today--yippee! Much as I love doing taxes (I know, it's weird, but I really do...that refund is one of the few perks of grad school) it's been weighing on my mind this year since I've been so busy. Glad to have it checked off my to-do list.

2) I was really productive after the kids went to bed--sometimes I just fall down the internet rabbit hole, but not tonight. I ran six miles and then walked another to cool down, folded and put away a lot of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and caught up on grading. The house is sparkling clean and ready for tomorrow!

3) Nathan ate a very large snack before bedtime. This means that he will actually sleep through the night instead of waking us up in the wee hours because he's hungry. Hallelujah! (Kid still does not eat enough and will probably always be on the slim side, but thank heavens that he's no longer projectile-vomiting multiple times after each meal.)

4) The younger boys and I met Neil today and had a really long leisurely delightful lunch. Those two are so well-behaved and so willing to try new foods that it is a total delight to introduce them to all different types of cuisine (you hear that, grumpy older kids who practically died tonight when you saw avocados in your chili?).

5) I was sooooo hungry after my run tonight and I made myself a PBJ with some of the jam I'd canned last summer and my favorite natural peanut butter. Simple pleasures, people, and oh so good.

February 10th

1) Piano lesson for the girls today and for once I didn't have any laptop work to do--so I just got to sit there and read the whole time! Yippee!

2) Ran all of the errands that have been nagging away at the back of my mind (bank, grocery store, library). Just little things but so freeing once I was finished with them...for this week, anyway! And I was able to completely reconstruct my grocery list from memory when I realized I'd left it on top of the dryer at home (which is really saying something because it was a very complicated list that included all of the things we were out of at home, plus all of the meal ingredients for the week, plus all of the stuff I need to host book group/do treats for class parties/valentines for class parties/kindergarten snacks for Isaaac's class for the whole week).

3) We finally got all of the K'nex cleaned up because Isaac finished his latest project and agreed to disassemble it, which is awesome because a) Abigail and Isaac's room is sparkling clean & vacuumed b) the K'nex are all locked up in their bin instead of hiding around the house to nab unsuspecting bare feet and c) I don't have to listen to Abigail complaining about running into the roller coaster in the middle of the night and Isaac complaining about Abigail breaking his roller coaster when she runs into it in the middle of the night. Tomorrow I am rearranging the furniture in that room to accommodate my little builder (as I type this I can see his rolling ball machine out of the corner of my eye--he cannot build in two rooms simultaneously!!).

4) I made one of my favorite dinners tonight--mushroom & chile carbonara. It's one that Neil and I used to make a lot when we were at BYU, but it doesn't make an appearance as frequently with only one mushroom-loving kiddo (Luke was in heaven!). And it's soooo easy...saute a pound of mushrooms in butter with a few cloves of garlic and a pinch of chile flakes while you cook 10 oz of thin spaghetti. Beat two eggs together with 1 1/4 c. cream, a pinch of salt, and 1/2 t. basil, then turn the cooked spaghetti into the mushroom mixture and add the cream/eggs. Heat gently until it thickens (don't boil!), and then top with 3-4 chopped tomatoes (and fresh basil if it's summer). Then we add fresh Parmesan. It's totally not a calorie-counting dinner, but it is ohhhh so good! (We love this paired with a green salad, but tonight I didn't have time so we just ate raw veggies with hummus and some more of those yummy clementines.)

5) And on that note, I have time tonight to do a long run so I'm off to the treadmill. Yippee! (I'm trying to convince myself that I'm excited instead of just wanting to go to bed.) :-)

February 9th

Jars in my kitchen--photo credit goes to Jessica Bateman 

1) I had a nice chat today with the guy who came to set up our new internet service (which hopefully will be rapid enough to allow Neil to work from home in the evenings--which would be AWESOME!). He looked up at the jars lining the tops of my cabinets, asked if I was Mormon, and then told me about his Mormon father-in-law. We ended up having a really nice chat about the church and I wrote down the info for him about the upcoming public open house for the Indianapolis temple. (Short version: if you've ever been curious about what the inside of a Latter-day Saint temple looks like, this is your chance to check it out! The temple will be open to the public for three weeks after its completion and before its dedication, after which it will be open only to recommend-holding members of the LDS church. I am SO excited for my kiddos to get the chance to tour the temple!!)

2) I had eleven holds come in at the library--I somehow managed to read three of them before going to bed (I stayed up until one! Yikes!). Lately I've been reading a lot about life for women in the Middle East & the Salem witch trials, so they are total page-turners (I love the kind of books, both fiction and nonfiction, where I end up doing exhaustive research afterwards to dig out the real facts, and then I read everything I can get my hands on to compare the different perspectives. Kind of a weird approach, I know, but I love it (and it's why I know a ridiculous amount about the Tudor period). So, for instance, I read this, this, and this).

3) On the books note, I am perpetually see-sawing between reading what I want to read and pre-reading stuff for the girls before I let them read it (man oh man can that eat up a ton of my reading time!!)--my current favorite author for them is Jessica Day George. I whipped through her Princess of Glass yesterday and passed it on to Abigail knowing that she would be just as enthralled as I was! I love talking books with the girls; I've always really loved YA fiction and it's so fun to read it with them.

4) I deep-cleaned my 'fridge. It took an inordinate amount of time, but I am loving the little spurt of joy and satisfaction I get every time I open it up and see those gleaming glass shelves!

5) Had a really good conversation with my department head about a stressful situation that left me feeling very reassured and like he was 100% on my team. So grateful to work with such a supportive department chair!!

Five for February*

As I am wont to do this time of year...(and better late than never, right?)

1) We spent two days skiing with the girls. Sheer bliss. I'll blog about it later, but it's still making me smile today so I'm counting it.
2) Today was my dear mother's birthday and I got to spend part of it with her. I felt so lucky to sit between my mother and grandmother in church today...
3)...holding a sleeping Luke. He used to nap in my arms constantly as a baby and toddler, but now those days are few and far between. He was all worn out from playing in the snow with his grandpa this weekend and just conked out on my lap for an hour. Heavenly for me.
4) Not quite as heavenly, but still something I am grateful for...I spent last night holding Nathan. All night. He howled inconsolably every time I tried to put him down (I would cry too if my parents disappeared during my nap one day, didn't appear again for two days, and then randomly showed up in the middle of the night and tried to sneak quietly into bed without paying attention to me!). I finally sent Neil to go find another bed (we were at my parents' house) and spent the night holding Nate in our bed. Every so often he would reach up his little hand and pat my face or run his hands through my hair while saying, "Mommy mommy mine mommy." It was a loooong night but I still pressed plenty of kisses onto that fluffy little head nestled against my shoulder.
5) We have a bowl of really amazing clementines right now. Mmmm...yummy citrus is one of the best things about winter!!

*curious about what five for February is all about? Explanation here.