Skiing!!

As if ice fishing and basketball games weren't enough for one day,

we decided to take the three oldest kids night skiing too.  Talk about a full day of fun! 

This is Ally going up the tow rope.  She and Logan are good little skiers!  I hadn't been skiing since before Josh and I were married.  I decided I didn't really like it back then so I was a little nervous about going. I was expecting Josh to help me learn again, but he had his hands full with Jensen.  I waited at the top of the "bunny hill" for a half hour waiting for him to come help me.  I finally had to just go down by myself.  This is what I discovered: skiing is terrifying!!!  I can't believe people do it for fun.  I was not enjoying it at all and there may or may not have been a few naughty words uttered in the process.  Ugh! 

Yes, Logan and Ally were MUCH better skiers than me.  By the end of the night I was making it down the bottom half of the "bunny hill" without crashing.  Logan and Ally would wave and ask if I wanted to race-ha, ha.  They thought they were so funny!

Jensen was a good kid to tough it out.  He definitely made progress and hung in there until the end. This picture was taken while we were waiting for Josh, Ally, Logan and Todd (our nephew) to come back from the "big hill".  They took forever because the lift operator didn't notice that Logan didn't get off the lift at the top.  He got sent back down the other side!  This is dangerous because all the weight is on the up side so the down side is much higher off the ground and there are NO SAFETY BARS!  I'm glad I wasn't there to witness it first hand!  He was very scared, but held on tight to the side and made it down safely.  I hope the lift operator got a serious talking to! Not cool!

Logan did end up going on the big hill again (brave boy) and by the end of the night we were all exhausted.  You can tell the kids and Josh had tons of fun.  As for me, I'm still not a huge fan of skiing.  But I'll probably go again because the kids and Josh enjoy it and I love to be with my family!

Ice Fishing

I consider myself a "fishergirl".  I grew up as my Dad's fishing companion and can definitely keep up with the guys when it come to fishing.  However, my Dad was not an ice-fisherman.  So I had never been-until yesterday!  Josh's cousin Shelby invited us to go with him and we were ready to give it a try.

We had to wake up early on Saturday morning to get a good place on the reservoir.  The kids were pretty excited to go, so things went pretty smoothly getting out the door.  This picture of Holden depicts his feelings about ice fishing.  This was taken before we even walked onto the ice.  I should have known he was going to be a little fishing-maniac!

We thought he would just play around while we were fishing, but we were WRONG!

He knew exactly what he was supposed to do (I blame the fishing game on my ipod touch-he loves that one).  He demanded his own pole and his own hole.  He would stick the tip of his pole in the hole and grin like crazy!  Then he saw us putting bait on everyone else's poles.  He had a tantrum until we put some on his.  He can be quite demanding (in a very loud, two year old way!).  By the end he was releasing his line and reeling it in like a pro. 

Ally enjoyed it, but wishes her cousin Kylah would have come.

Jensen had lots of fun and didn't want to leave.

Just imagine Holden saying: "Fish. Where are you?" Too cute!  He was REALLY into it!

He was not a happy camper when we left.  He and Jensen both cried.  But Ally and Logan had basketball games to get to.  We didn't catch anything this time (Holden probably had something to do with that) but this is definitely on my list of things to do again!

The January Blah

Here we are, right in the middle of January.  I call it the "January Blah".  I hide in my house and dream of nice weather.  The kids usually have colds (as we do right now) and are tired of being cooped up.  There's not really anything to look forward to.  No holidays or birthdays in our family.  Josh's work is slow, so there's not money to do anything fun (like Disneyland, sigh). It's just blah.

We decided to take Holden's binky away a few days ago.  He sleeps wonderfully at night without it (yay!).  But he won't nap without it (aughhh!).  It was pretty pathetic the first couple of days.  He would walk around the house with tears in his eyes saying "Inky, 'ere are yoooh".  I felt like a mean Mommy.  But he seems to be doing okay.  He hasn't mentioned it once today. And we can see his cute face!

Here's our cute binkyless Bubby.

Holden has developed a new obsession: MY ipod touch!!  I don't really like him to play with it (he already deleted some stuff) so I have to keep it hidden from him.  But when I need a few minutes of peace I get it out.  It's amazing how quickly kids are learning things these days!

A rare moment of brotherly love.  They enjoy being cowboys together.

Jensen has watched Ally and Logan bring home trophies through the years and has been asking when he would get his own.  Well, they had the Reflections awards assembly yesterday and his dream came true!  I told him I didn't know if he would get a trophy, but he was actually a school winner in the Visual Arts category.  He was so happy to finally have a trophy.  He didn't even realize (or care) that he was a school winner.  He just wanted a trophy!  Way to go, Jensen!