Foggy Fun

If I'm completely honest, this weekend wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for.  The entire city was covered in fog on Saturday.  It's hard to explain how or why, but my brain and emotions fog up in cloudy weather as well.  On the positive side, this weekend at home made me feel more grateful for all the Saturdays we've spent skiing.  True, it means getting up early and we are exhausted by the end of the day.  Overall though, I prefer feeling tired to feeling lost.

Speaking of skiing, the weekend got off to a rocky start on Friday night when Jason, Talia, and Eli drove up to Brighton for their customer appreciation event.  With free s'mores, music, and fireworks, it seemed like an awesome event.  In the end, thousands of others must have thought it was a brilliant idea too because the place was packed.  It took hours to get up the canyon.  After finally finding a place to park, they got all their gear on and trekked to the lift, only to discover a ginormous, snaking line with hundreds of people in it.  In the end, they decided to just turn around and go home, never skiing at all.  Bummer.

Fortunately, Brooklyn, Annie, and I had more fun back in Salt Lake.  Brooklyn invited her friend Jasmina over, while Annika and Ruby enjoyed their very first sleepover.  Those cousins are so cute in their matching jammies!  I expected Annika and Ruby might have a hard time sleeping, but at 7:15 pm Ruby told me she was tired.  After tooth brushing and stories, these two cuties went straight to bed and slept all the way until 8:00 the next morning!  I can't remember the last time Annika slept for twelve hours straight.  Cousins are a great influence.  Brooklyn pointed out that they are young enough to believe that the best part of a sleepover is the sleeping.

For breakfast the next morning, we indulged in pink pancakes with heart shapes cut out of the middle.  All ready for Valentine's day!

I had a few personal wishes for Saturday, specifically getting to the gym and going to the temple.  While neither of those things worked out for me, I was able to help Brooklyn and Talia get to the Bountiful temple to do proxy baptisms.  (The two hour wait surprised us, but we survived.)  Nobody got to the gym, although Jason got to set up lots of chairs in the church gym in preparation for a funeral luncheon.  As bishop of our congregation, Jason conducted his third funeral this weekend.

Meanwhile, back on the homefront Annika made a turtle costume...

Eli made some magnatile dolphins...

...and Brooklyn made some fortune cookies.

All in all, not a bad weekend, especially when shared with such great kids.  But now fog, shoo.  I'm ready for my brain to clear.

Full STEAM ahead: STEM plus Art

"I cry the day that I take the tree down."  These lyrics from Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols ring so true.  Putting away Christmas is always sad.  I especially dislike taking all of the Christmas cards down from the refrigerator.  To fill the void, I've put up some of Annika's recent artwork.

The other day she and Ruby constructed an entire community, complete with a slide, road, houses, and a zoo.  She loves cutting and gluing so much that I'm planning on buying her a pack of construction paper for her birthday next week.

This morning before school, she drew a couple more pictures of the the things she loves: dolphins and horses.

Recently she and I were having a discussion about the song "Some things never change" from Frozen 2. Annika pointed out its truth with the argument, "It's like my love for animals.  That will never change."  Very likely.  I wonder if she will someday become a vegetarian as a result.  Today she pointed out an incongruity from Wild Kratts and asked why Jimmy eats pepperoni pizza if they all love animals so much.  Brooklyn likewise has thought a bit more about vegetarianism since dissecting a fetal pig in her biology class last week.  She must not have been that disturbed, however, since she still devoured my butternut squash and sausage soup.

As for Eli, he was busy tonight with his school science fair.  His project on refraction received an Honorable Mention.  I was particularly proud of how self-motivated he was in carrying out his project.  In fact, this evening was the very first time I saw his board.  Well-done, Cheezstick.

Emerson does a stellar job of combining their science fair with a STEM night that recruits organizations from all over the community to come share. 

Most beloved station of all?

Crafting a caterpillar.  And so the animal love circles back round, just as Christmas will surely come again too.

Room for Improvement

One awesome part about this new blogging style is that it should be much easier to share videos, like this one of Jason skiing with Annie and Ruby today. 

Despite the fact that she’s probably ridden a hundred chair lifts, Annika still has some room for improvement.

Best. Date. Ever.

Yesterday was amazing.  Instead of skiing as a family, Jason and I let the kids sleep in and headed up to Brighton for a few hours  After Friday's snowfall, the powder was fantastic.  

Just as wonderful was the chance to reconnect as a couple.  After being married for sixteen years, it's easy to take our relationship for granted, especially with our family's busy schedule.  Taking the time to be together just the two of us, especially in such a beautiful place, was priceless.  Even getting stuck on the ski lift doesn't seem too bad when you can snuggle with the one you love.

Physically fatigued but emotionally recharged, Jason and I feel ready to conquer the new week--together.

Snow!

Thought for the day: snow!  We've had plenty of accumulation and super slick roads, yet nary a late start, let alone a snow day.  I'm glad the buses got my kids to school this morning; now I just hope they can get them home.

Despite all the shoveling required, the snow is beautiful.  Light and fluffy, it whitewashes the winter grays.

Plus, sledding!

Ironically enough, yesterday reached a high of fifty degrees.  All of the snow melted from our sidewalks and street, leaving just enough to build a snowman.

Love it.

I don't really think kids can spend too much time outside playing in the snow.  Good thing too, since a week ago Eli spent an entire Saturday making hundreds, if not thousands of sculpted snow balls.

Three cheers for the snowball maker.  Given the right conditions, this gimmick is amazing.

Time for the ultimate snowball fight!

Should you need refuge, Annika set up a tent and campfire in the living room.

Winter camping, here we come.  :)

Couch Treasures

Happy 2020! It's practically a miracle, but I am essentially caught up on this blog.  Hallelujah!  For reals.  It's been a long time.

With this new decade, I'd like to experiment with a new method of blogging.  I'm hoping to post small updates far more frequently, uploading a picture or two every day(ish) rather than waiting until I get around to a giant photo dump.  I recognize this is ambitious, but I'm anxious to find a new system that is less tedious and more personally rewarding.

So...here we go!  The first photo uploaded directly from my phone.

Beautiful, right?  In case you are wondering, this is a picture the kids took last night by sending my phone into the depths of the couch interior encased in a plastic bag so they could fish it back out.  Meanwhile they photographed the couch's mysterious contents by using my Apple Watch.  You'd think we were exploring the Titanic.  They were trying to recover the Kindle Fire Stick that Eli lost down there.  Brooklyn had told him to hide it, but this was a little bit too well!  We ended up having to turn the couch upside down and remove upholstery staples to get to the interior.  We found bananagrams, marbles, pens, pencils, a house key, and two Kindle firesticks if you count the one we lost over a year ago.  The best discovery of all?  Indiana.  For years, our United States puzzle has had 49 states.  United at last.

If you look past the dust bunnies of our couch picture, you can see some plastic.  This is from all of the plarn (plastic yarn) that the kids have been making out of our plastic grocery bags.




It's a messy business, but the crocheted plastic mats turn out pretty well.  Eventually these will be donated to the Bags to Beds program for the homeless.

Well-done, Talia!

Now if we can just keep our belongings out of the couch.

Our Happy Hat Christmas

Merry Christmas 2019!  Our Christmas day began with all the grandchildren lining up in size order before heading downstairs.  Anders wasn't that thrilled about being forced to take a picture.  Also, Talia will likely be in the back next year.

First order of business--Trix!  Or in our case, Unicorn cereal.

Next it was straight into the throes of package opening.  You can see Papa Kay is all ready to go with his trash bag.

While shopping for presents may stress me out, gift opening was delightful.  Annika received everything off her gift list: an alicorn (that's a unicorn with wings), a toy lizard (actually a dozen)...

...and a dolphin costume.  My, my!  We're trading this one in for a larger size.  Plus, we're recommending tights.

Anders got this amazing Melodihorn...

...while Eila got a beautiful violin.

Brooklyn and Talia were delighted to unwrap the newest illustrated Harry Potter (thanks, Alesia!)... 

...while Eli was thrilled with his drone.


Jason dressed for Christmas in this classy new shirt from Lance...

...but liked his New York subway shirt so much that he swapped it out.

But wait, what about these gorgeously wrapped gifts?  An assortment of these lovely packages also arrived from Cousin Alesia.

Hand-knitted hats!  These thoughtful gifts were the highlight of Christmas.  Alesia put so much thought into finding the perfect pattern to match each person's personality.  She sure nailed it with Eli's BB-8.

Talia's bowtruckle from Fantastic Beasts might be my very favorite.

It's an awfully close call, though, with Annika's Light Fury.

Such a perfect match for her beloved stuffie, Chloe.

Eila's Cinderella hat was the perfect match for her Halloween costume.

While you can't see it from this picture, Brooklyn's hat features the Deathly Hallows.  Potter Perfect.

Trucks for Anders, Central purple for NomiAnn, and cute color schemes for Callie and I.  Truly, the most special gifts ever.  Thank you ever so much, Alesia!  We'll always remember our happy hat Christmas.

As Christmas day was balmy, we took a pause from opening presents to walk to the park.

 

 Eli was delighted to fly his new drone.

I confess: pretty nifty.

No better place for tossing Brooklyn's new Captain America frisbee.  I love Adam's Santa T-Rex suit jacket.

 All in all, a delightful Christmas. 

Skipping back to the frisbee theme, we discovered Omaha is home to the Disc Store.  Brooklyn thought she'd died and gone to heaven.

Other adventures: The Children's Museum.  You're looking sharp, Callie!

Fontenelle Forest.  Nice tower, Eli!

Lake Zorinsky.  Zoe's sure looking stylish!

Breakfast at Burger King with Papa Kay.

Lunch at Firehouse Subs.

And of course, the zoo.  The place is jiving, right Eila?

NomiAnn and her gals.  So happy to all be together!

The zoo was the perfect place to show off our hats.  Look how nicely Talia's matches her coat.

In case you want to see some animals, Eila and Annie can show you the way.

Aw, red pandas!

Elephants.

And back to the coolest hats.

We had so much fun at the zoo that we came back on New Year's eve for their Noon Year's Eve celebration.

 The ball drop was crowded, but there were plenty of goodies for everyone.

Most everyone walked away happy.

Except for Anders, that it.  Poor guy fell and banged up his face.  The scrape on his face is actually from an earlier incident.  Two is tough.

 That evening we gathered for our traditional New Years fondue.

Yummy!

Happy 2020!  No better way to start the year than with a thoughtful package from the Vedeckis family.  Thank you!  We feel so spoiled and loved.

Naturally we tried to gather all the grands together for a photo.  Anders didn't like it much at first.

Thank heavens for Callie's slapstick humor!  She delighted them all with her silly antics behind the camera.

Our final adventure: Urban Air Trampoline Park on New Year's day.  Between the high ropes course...

...the Ninja Warrior obstacles

...the climbing wall

...and the trampolines,

 ...we had a flippingly good time.  (That's Callie going round.)

You could practically lose yourself in all the fun.

On behalf of our favorite canine niece, we hope everyone had a wonderfully merry Christmas and wish you the happiest New Year.

 Papa Kay and NomiAnn, an especially heartfelt thanks to you both for making this Christmas so special.  The house was so beautifully decorated, the food was delicious, but most of all, we cherished being together.  We love you!