What are we up to these days?... Too many activities sometimes, or sometimes not enough. We try to find a balance of Steve and I needing to be social, and to get out or have folks over, and wanting to be outside... balancing that with the kids wanting and needing to just stay home on the weekends, since they are both at daycare all week. I know they want to just be home whenever they can, so we are usually mellow on weekends unless I can convince them that they really want to go somewhere :) Usually a trip to Grammy and Bumpa's and to the hardware store are an easy sell, and lately skiing has been an easier sell too! (woohoo!!)
My two sisters came over for a weekend visit last month, and Kirsten brought her three kiddos --super fun to see them all and let the cousins play! Kendra and Kirsten and I managed to break away (leaving 5 kids with mom and dad) so we could do a little moonlight cross country skiing on Plain Hardwares groomed track. Amongst the many hi-tech skate skiers out that night, we were quite the ragtag crew in a bunch of thrown together classic three-prong setups, mom's teal and purple ski gear, and ill fitting ski poles, but we had just as much fun as everyone else. Just goes to show that unless you are being competitive, (with yourself or others) there's just not a need for all that new stuff!
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| Nephew Erick attempts to stand up and sled down the mound of snow. |
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| oops. |
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| Luckily he's tough. This happened like 10 times. :) |
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| We took Erick and Aleksandr snomobiling in the back acreage... they were so excited! |
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| Olaf and Daddy used his new legos from Kirsten and Grandpa to build a whole host of things. A boy after my own heart... he loves when things are symmetrical! |
We also had our annual family weekend with some of Steve's family up at a house in Marysville. It was a little different this year in that the Montana Saugens and the CA Hizons couldn't join us, but we still had a blast! The kids LOVE hanging out together, and they are getting so easy to watch it gives us mamas plenty of time to hang out too :)
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| Tara and I found plenty of time to make earrings during the football games :) |
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| Crazy, unfocused, moving all the time cousin crew. |
Also had some mellow weekends at home while daddy was gone. Full of nothing but playing with toys and watching cartoons.
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| Balance board action. |
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| Making bread in our jammies. |
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| Foresty's first day on skis! |
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| Olaf is REALLY getting the hang of it. 6 laps on Daisy with no assistance and only one wipeout. He really likes making trains and following the leader :) |
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| Hot cocoa treat. |
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| Smiles with "Jemmy" |
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| Skiing with Bumpa! |
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| That is one tired out little kid. |
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| Breakfast at the Original Pancake house in Seattle. "Pampakes" are they way to my boy's hearts. |
For Lent this year I decided to give up reading blogs. So far it's been great... Hard to do because that was part of how I "wound down" at night. But so nice to not spend my whole evening living vicariously through a bunch of people that (for the most part) I don't even know! I am much happier focusing on projects at home and (hopefully) putting together a few more blog posts of my own. So many thoughts in my head and heart... I am not one to spill much heart stuff out here on this public blog, but hopefully some of my new thoughts make it on here :)
