More Winter Fun

Even though we weren't getting a lot of big snow storms, we still had lots of fun skiing.  So much fun that Abby was often pretty worn out by the end of the day!  We loved the days that it was warm enough to hang out outside while other kids kept skiing.  Abby is pretty darn cute when she's all worn out! 

We also happened to go skiing on Fat Tuesday and we laughed when some people for Louisiana gave us some beads!

Abby also got a ring pop sucker and we thought it was funny because a little piece stuck to her lip and it looked like a tooth.

 A lot of ski days ended with Abby pretty worn out!

Finally towards the end of the month we started getting some decent storms.  All the kids were pretty excited about that.  One of our best storms was when Jerry was when Jerry happened to be out of town at a 24 hour bike race with some of the other team coaches!  We didn't let that keep us home.  I loaded the kids in the car and we headed up really early to enjoy the 16 inches of fresh powder!  Kate looked like an old lady when she came in the lodge because the snow and ice had frozen to her hair!

We were also glad that we got to finally go sledding.  We had so little snow even in our backyard this year so even though we'd been skiing all day, we still went sledding when we got home because we didn't know if we would get many more chances.

It wasn't always Abby that was exhausted by the end of the day...

Tulo and I also had a lot of fun in the snow.  He loves playing around in it.  We had a couple of storms that were so deep that he had to pretty much jump from spot to spot.  It's pretty fun to play around with him!

Draper Temple for the win

The school schedules here are so weird.  But we roll with the punches as best as we can.  It just so happened that Sara had been off track for most of January and then she went back to school.  The day she went back, Matt and Kate had a day off of school.  No matter, we spent some time doing some older kid activities.  We went to the Draper Temple and it was an amazing day.  With the Jordan River Temple being closed the other temples around here have been really busy.  This day it happened that Jordan District was out of school but not the district that is part of the Draper Temple, so we went there.  They said that Oquirrh Temple had like a three hour wait, but there was no one at Draper.  So Matt and Kate got a little bit of extra attention.  They got to do all the names they'd brought with them, Kate got to give Matt his towel and then at the end they got to record their family names on the computer so that was pretty cool.  It was a pretty special day and I am glad we got to have that time together.

Fun in the snow

We love winter!  I seriously love having four different seasons and getting to play in them.  Matt has been wanting to step up his skiing game so he's been trying more things like jumps and stuff.  He had fun this year going with friends and stuff more.  

Matt worked on this jump a lot this season.  He had a lot of fun.

Kate gained a lot of confidence this year.  She lacks a little in technique, but she makes up for it in wanting more adventure and not backing down.  We took them over to the Snake Bowl a lot this year and had a ton of fun.  It was a good place to go when there wasn't a ton of snow at the resort.  We loved that getting to the bowl involves a kind of crazy traverse so a lot of people don't venture there.  Also, whoever was skiing with Abby and Sara could take a different run and meet us at the bottom.  It worked really well!

Tulo and I also love playing in the snow.  I love that way less people are out so I can let him off his leash more and I also love that there are no snakes out!!  Win/win for both of us!

We used one of our free passes to Solitude one day.  It was fun but the snow wasn't great.  We still had fun though, Abby had so much fun that she fell asleep on Jerry's lap before the rest of us were done!  Cute, tough little girl.

More running on the trails in the snow.  It bums me out that so much of the area around here is watershed and I can't bring Tulo, but I still had fun running in the snow!

Diet Water in action again

Matt got together with his robotics team again this year.  They had a different coach this year who was a little more knowledgeable about engineering and programming.  That was really fun for Matt.  He let the boys do all the work, but he was better able to help them when they had questions.  So, it was fun.  I am still amazed at what these kids can build and program!

This is the autonomous driving portion that they programmed their robot to do.  They were able to set it all up but then it just performed the program that they'd set it to.  They worked really hard on this part and were proud of it.

This is part of the driving portion of the contest so they are controlling their robot manually.  They figured out some cool things and had fun with this too!  They qualified for the state competition so they were already planning what changes they could make.

Abby

Pretty much every Sunday we hang out with some friends in our ward.  We started hanging out before they had kids and now they have two so it seems like we've watched them grow up.  Dean and Abby are little buddies for sure.  I loved it when I caught Abby with her arm around Dean and he was sitting right next to her playing.  It was pretty cute.

Abby also had a super exciting thing happen at school...she'd been working really hard on letters and sounds and blending and all that and she got to start bringing home real books!!  It was a pretty exciting day for her.  I see some similarities with her and Kate and some struggles to sound out words so I have been really grateful for all the tutoring we did with Kate because I have so many more tools I can use to help Abby.  We are going slowly and making sure that she is doing things correctly and she's figuring it all out!  I am very proud of her and all the hard work she's done already!

Off track fun for Sara

Sara and I have enjoyed our time the past two years when Abby has been in preschool and she's been off track.  We have spent a lot of time in the climbing gym.  Sara really likes climbing and it's fun having one on one time with her.

I was pretty proud of her for getting this move down!

Ski season in full swing!

It really took a long time for winter to get going this year.  So we were especially glad when we finally got some snow storms.  I love it when my kids are off track and now that it's only Sara and Abby we laugh at Matt and Kate going to school while we're getting ready to go skiing!

Abby and Sara had a great time playing in a little powder.  I can't believe how good Abby is getting!

The storm kept dumping more snow so Jerry decided to go up the next day and Sara begged to go with him.  I loved that!  Jerry said they had a great day skiing together.

First chair is mandatory when you ski with Dad!

Happy New Year!

Yay for New Years!  My favorite holiday because all you have to do for it to be fun is stay up until midnight and have food and chincy little toy prizes.  Abby was so excited to open the little popper things and get her paper crown and other cheap token.  So funny.  We had fun hanging out with friends and on the way home Abby lost a tooth so that was super fun and exciting!  Crazy that another year has gone by but we have had big plans for 2018!