March 2018

Somehow Jen and Sherri and I were able to sneak away to snowboard at Targhee without any kids!  It was pretty darn awesome.  When we first got off the lift at the top, we could see the whole view.  Amazing!  But that was the last we saw of it.  Because the clouds and snow came and it was basically a white out the rest of the day.  It was mighty cold.  But as long as there was no skin showing, we were ok, lol.  It was really foggy and we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us.  Luckily, Jen kind of knew the mountain so we just followed her.  We only almost fell off a cliff once.  The fresh snow was really nice, but it made it impossible to see anything!  We couldn't even see the snow we were riding on.  I tried with and without my goggles and it didn't matter.  There were times I thought the ground was pretty flat, but then I went flying.  One time I was slowly inching backwards looking up at my friends, on what I thought was open mountain, when I slid off a two foot drop.  Luckily it was only two feet!  It was surprising.  You literally couldn't see the shadows telling you depth.  More than once, I thought I was standing still, only to catch and edge and fall because I was actually gliding along slowly.  You could not see the ground moving under you.  This weird phenomenon is what had me laughing so hard I was crying.  Sherri was standing up straight and then laying on the steep mountain with no clue how she got there, like an penguin with its arms down.  She thought she was on flat ground.  I'm telling you, it was disorienting and kind of dangerous.  But they never shut down the lift so we just kept going.  It was a really great day and I hope to do it again soon!

 I don't get many pictures of my kids playing indoor soccer because you just can't get any good pictures.  Besides the net in the way, the lighting is so bad.  But they both played two sessions of indoor this winter and both love it.  Both teams were pretty much undefeated if I remember correctly.

 I took my Webelo scouts to the Webelos WOW.  It was an all day Saturday even where they passed off multiple badges.  It was a long day but my co-leader really wanted to do it because it saves us the work.  The engineering one was cool and I'm glad they had someone to do that for them.  They made paper airplanes and a catapult.  They also did some cool science stuff, and learned all about rocks, which sounds boring, but was kinda cool and the boys seemed to like it.  The lady that did it was quite impressive.

I mentioned Kylee working on her Festival songs.  She made it to Festival and performed her songs and did really well from what I could tell.  She got a score of 99!  I have her paper with the judges notes somewhere I will have to add in some time.  The day following Festival was the piano recital and she was going to play one of her songs, but she ended up getting really sick so she stayed at home.  Sadie got to go play her song, though.  She is so cute and does so good when she works hard at it!

Kylee getting sick was just the start.  It proceeded to pass through our whole family.  The stressful part was that it was the week before Spring Break and we needed everyone to be healthy!!  This was Kaden cuddling with me when he was sick.  Thankfully it did pass just in time.  It would've been a long plane ride with a sick child!

 The school held their carnival in the Spring this year.  I have a love/hate for the carnival.  It's fun for the kids.  But they get a bunch of treats and junk toys.  I always have to do work for my kids' classes to get these raffle baskets made, especially if I'm the room mom.  And it ends up costing quite a bit of money for the raffle tickets and game punch card, etc.  I'm glad the school makes money.  But it stresses me out.  This year I ended up staying home.  I think it was when Kaden was sick.  So Ryan went with the other kids and Dylan ended up winning this raffle basket!  First time in 7 years that we've won anything, so that was fun.

 We went to Florida for Spring Break, which I will post about later.  But after we got home it was almost Easter so we went to the annual egg hunt at the Country Club.  Always a good time.  I remember egg hunts being actual 'hunts' when I was younger.  Now they just toss them onto the grass and see who can pick them up fastest.  Boring.  Good thing we still do 'hunts' at home.  The kids are sure cute though.  And happy.

The Rest of Florida

Long days and "jet-lag" really wear you out!  Especially the 3-year-old who still wants to nap.  You just sleep whenever the opportunity arises.  Except Kylee.  I had her pretend.  She is not a great actress.

 We went back to the same sushi place because it was yummy.  Dylan got some teriyaki dish and cleaned his plate!  Even the veggies and the rice.  So nice that he can eat something that's not burgers and fries.  Kylee got sushi :)

 Dylan had his heart set on a dipped ice cream cone because he remembered it from last time I guess.  But we weren't over by the beach where the ice cream shop was so we talked him into Krispy Kreme donuts instead.  I've never been and thought this assembly line was pretty cool.  And they let kids pick a free donut right off the line.  Score!  But we also had to buy some of course.

 Sugar is a sweet dog.  The kids give her SO much attention when we are there. 

 Kylee got an early birthday present from Grandma, a mani-pedi.  They enjoyed their girl time together.

 Ryan took the kids shopping for souvenir cups to keep their shells in.  Sadie got tired, so Kylee stepped up and gave her a ride, lol.

It's been a few years since I've been able to meet up with my friends from 9th grade south florida.  But it's still as fun as always!  I love these girls and I'm so glad they made the drive.  Anna is now in  northern Florida and Sunni is still down south.  We met in Melbourne and had a yummy meal.

My mom and Tom run races nearly every weekend.  We weren't able to arrange our trip early enough for me to do the 10 mile run the weekend before with them, but I did get to do a 5K with them the Saturday I was there.  Running in Florida feels like cheating since my lungs are so much more proficient than these sea-level folks.  But I'll take the advantage.  I got a PR, which is fun because I didn't think I would ever even try to get a faster time than the last one I got the summer before this.  But I got 23:22 which was good enough to get me 2nd place in my age group.  That's a good thing because my mom places in her age group 95% of the time so at least I kept up!  My mom got 2nd as well, and some of her friends also placed.  It was fun to be there in their element with them!

And to finish us off, a picture of mom and Tom in the kitchen cooking for us, which they did a lot.  Especially Tom.  He's a great cook and seems to enjoy it.

FL- Treetop Trek

As if all that wasn’t enough fun yet, we decided to try one more thing while we were there.  Treetop Trek!  They call it “aerial adventures”.  You are walking on bridges and things up in the trees and doing zip lines.  They have very small courses, intermediate ones, and expert ones.  We signed Sadie and Kaden up for the Chutes and Ladders one that is smaller and not as high.  Kaden was not having it.  Had I seen what they were supposed to do beforehand, I would’ve known Kaden wouldn’t want to do it, or wasn’t capable.  He just cried when we put on his helmet and harness, he was really tired so that was part of it.  So I took his stuff back and got a refund.  

 My mom stayed with Sadie and Kaden while Ryan and I went with Kylee and Dylan to do the Beginner course (21 elements, 2 zip lines).  It took awhile to go through orientation, but it was important so that we don’t die!  It was really cool though how they have the hooks so you don’t have to unhook and rehook, and risk falling during that time, or doing double safety measures that take a long time and are hard to remember.  They have hooks with a little hole in it big enough to slide past connectors, but not big enough to come off the ropes.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but trust me, it was cool.

We had a lot of fun.  I was very surprised at how little fear Dylan had.  He has developed this fear of heights and thrilling rides lately so I wasn’t even sure he would like it.  But he took off and I had to ask him to wait for me a few times.  I guess he was confident that he was strapped in and wouldn’t die.  He had a blast.  Some of it was a bit scary for me!  Got my heart pumping.  But I trust the lines as well.  Some day it would be fun to go do some of the harder courses meant for adults/teens.  They are a lot longer and harder and probable require some strength, right up my alley.