We finally decided it was time to teach the kids to ski. We had some friends suggest that we take a whole weekend and enroll them in lessons so they could get lots of practice in a row. So off we went to Wenatchee to ski at Mission Ridge. Jim and I were excited to get our skis on snow after spending most of the kids’ lives off the mountain.

In the hotel the night before the first ski day, we pumped up the kids with a little Warren Miller.

We also showed them videos of little kids learning to ski before we left the hotel Sunday morning.

The kids were very happy to be there. They loved their new goggles and were excited to try it out!

We had plenty of time before their ski lesson to get them into their skis. They had an awesome first day! After lessons (and Jim and I got a whole hour to ski), we ate lunch together. Then we took the kids back to the rope tow for some more practice.

Haley wrote this cute note in the hotel room: “We are going skiing in Wenatchee. We went in the pool! We are so excited to ski and sleep in the hotel.”

On day two, Haley was a little nervous about the rope tow. She was upset that she hadn’t perfected it the first day. But we found out from her instructor that she rocked it the second day and she never had a problem again!

Jim and I had more fun skiing and getting our snow legs back while the kids were in lessons. After lunch, the kids were sure they wanted to try a real ski lift. Their instructor said that they were ready, so off we went! Haley loved the lift ride itself but was a little nervous about getting off… understandably so. But it was soooo fun for me to ride the lift up with her, especially since I remember my mom teaching me how to ski when I was five.

We took our time coming down the green circle hill. The kids did awesome!

After one time down the green circle hill, Jim wisely decided that we should end on a high note. So we didn’t push it for another time down the mountain. So we took the kids back to the bunny hill and let them go crazy. They closed it down! We were so impressed. They obviously learned a ton doing two days in a row. When we told them it was time to go, they didn’t want to leave.

We are looking forward to taking them skiing again this year and in the years to come!

We got a great deal on a night at Great Wolf Lodge a few months ago and booked it for this weekend, as a sort of family Valentine’s Day gift. (Of course, Jim got me earrings anyway… but that was not the plan.) We arrived on Sunday evening after JT’s baseball tryouts and checked in and walked around. We had an hour to go in the water park before our dinner reservations. After dinner, we played mini golf and got ice cream before heading to bed.

On Monday, we had a yummy buffet breakfast before hitting the water park for the morning. After moving our things from the hotel room to the car at 11 AM, we got some lunch and closed out the day at 2 PM to head home for basketball practice.

Overall impression:
1. We had fun watching the kids have fun.
2. It is fun to go down water slides and play in the wave pool in a 84 degree environment.
3. Checking something off our kids’ “wish we could do list” was nice.
4. Stop trying to sell my children something every fifteen feet.
5. There is not enough there to warrant more than about four hours of play in the water park. If that!

We got snow. Lots and lots of snow. The most we’ve had in five years, apparently! This first picture was taken first thing in the morning, but then it snowed allllll day. The general consensus was 9 inches in our neighborhood. Wow!

Our power went out at 5 AM. I woke up and went downstairs and turned on our gas fireplace. I am so thankful to have a gas range, gas water heater, and gas heat! Having the power out basically means no lights and no internet. Except for the fridge and cell phone charging… but it all works out. I emailed my boss to let her know and she wrote back, “Go make snow angels with your kids.” And with that, Jim and I were both home and off work for the day!

We headed outside right after breakfast. We ended up sledding in the street with the other families and socializing with neighbors walking by. It was so fun!

After a lunch break, two of our neighbor friends came over for bonfire and fun. I couldn’t believe we had six adults and ten kids all hanging out at our house in the snow on a weekday!

After it started getting dark, we all headed home to get dry and warm – and then we had a rendezvous at one house for Super Bowl leftovers for dinner by candlelight with the gentle hum of a generator in the background. Power came back on by bedtime! Internet, however, took another 24 hours. 😦

With two of our nephews recovering from a bad flu, our oldest nephew on Jim’s side came to spend the weekend with us. He fit right in with our weekend plans and was so easy to have around.

First we went to JT’s basketball game. Haley wasn’t smiling here because she missed the countdown, but she was having fun too.

JT and Haley spent their time the rest of the day playing with Travis, and he slept in JT’s room, and things were very easy. I joked to Jim that having three children is a piece of cake. 😉 We are NOT having more children! Here they are at bedtime enjoying books before bed.

On Sunday, we went to church and Travis enjoyed being in Haley’s Sunday School class.

After playing in the rain after lunch, the kids bundled up for a snack.

We walked to a neighbor’s house for a Super Bowl party, and Travis came with us for just a bit before Jim’s sister picked him up to go home. It was a fun weekend!

Can you believe it? We barely can. We went on our first date together 20 years ago. TWENTY YEARS. It feels like a very long time, and yet it’s all gone by so quickly. For our first date, we went to the Seattle Boat Show and to Ivar’s on the waterfront for dinner. I think that’s a pretty decent first date for high school! We usually try to go to the boat show, but this year we decided to go to Ivar’s for dinner as well so we could celebrate twenty years of dates.

This year, we got blessed by a bunch of freeness (is that a word?). We had free tickets to the Boats Afloat part on Lake Union, which got us into the indoor boat show for free as well. When we parked at Lake Union, a man who was leaving gave us his parking pass so we didn’t have to pay.

Then we drove up the hill to the indoor show, and the garage attendant said there wasn’t a fee to park at Century Link that late in the day. At the show, Jim convinced me to let him buy me a new ski. 🙂 He’s been working on me for a few years now. We were in the Wiley’s booth and he said, “There it is honey, that’s the ski I would get you.” It was the 2016 version of the ski with boat show closeout pricing, so I thought about it and finally said yes. I’m super excited to try it out!

We got an awesome spot on the water right outside Ivar’s, which is unheard of because there are so few spots. And guess what? No parking fees on Sundays. Yes! I took advantage of the great seafood and went crazy because I don’t get a lot of seafood lovin’ at home.

We decided to split a dessert and, when the waiter brought it, he said it was on the house because we had to wait awhile for our food… which we didn’t even notice. So that was super. We took this photo as we were leaving for home and it was my favorite of the night. We had a great time out together and look forward to another 20 60 years of dates!

One of our favorite things to do is to invest in our children. I am so thrilled that I get to spend time at our kids’ school this year! I volunteer one morning a week and spend time in both kids’ classes. Haley got to use the 3D computer with me last week to dissect a dinosaur!

JT received an Eagle Award at his school assembly for his respectful behavior. Awesome!

We all enjoy watching JT play basketball – and Jim coach! Sometimes Haley keeps stats.

JT earned a reward to sit at his teacher’s desk for a day at school. He got to use ink pens on his assignments, all of the stamps, and the twirly chair. It’s a big deal that only a few kids have had a chance to do (this is his second time).

We attended STEM night at their school last week. It was fun to participate in projects and build together.

Then Jim and Haley had their Dads and Daughters night for Husky women’s basketball. Except it was on a Friday, and he works on Fridays, so JT and I delivered Haley to the event center and Jim met up with us. It was an amazing game and we had a great time attending all together.

This weekend, we signed both kids up for baseball – JT for minors and Haley for another year of t-ball. She gets to have the same coach and many of the same kids again, and she’s really excited about that. JT has to “tryout” for minors, so we don’t know his coach or teammates yet, but we’re looking forward to spring! I took pictures of them signing their paperwork just in case they do something else that requires a contract as adults, and then we’ll have these adorable pictures for comparison!

We had some pretty exciting mail this week! We’ve been sponsoring a child in Sri Lanka through World Vision for over a year, and we hadn’t received any communication from her. The average time to receive any mail from a child is three months, so we were surprised but tried to be patient. We send her mail every month, and just trust that it has gotten to her. But then this week we received a postcard! Right away, we took a photo with the card and sent it to her so she can see we got it (you can email your child and the local agency prints and translates it for you – so handy).

Normally, the cards are translated. This one was wrapped in an envelope with staff member writing “Love and peace to your family” and “Merry Christmas,” but we weren’t exactly sure that was what our child had written.

It’s our fifth anniversary of traveling to Naches, Washington for a weekend in the snow with our #roomiereunion buddies. We love spending time with the five other families we’ve known since college. This year we had 12 adults and 17 children (with two still baking in their mama ovens). We arrived at dinnertime on Saturday because we had basketball that morning, so we missed a full day of snow with everyone. But we were ready to rock on Sunday morning! We started with breakfast at the main house with everyone. Look at all those kiddos…

It was a balmy 9 degrees when we headed outside. There was a ton of snow, and we were ready to slide!

Tres hombres

My favorite snow bunnies

We had some time in the afternoon to do some hooky bobbing.

In the evening, Jim and I joined seven kids in the hot tub on one of the patios. It was crowded and goofy and fun.

Monday morning, we gathered for a group photo. It’s so fun to see how much these kids grow (and the families grow…) over the years.

Monday warmed up to 14 degrees! I got more photos and we spent most of the morning in the snow. JT spent the morning trying to break the distance record marked by a stick at the end of the track. Haley took two snow walks (one really more of a hike) and enjoyed sledding through the tunnel – yes, there was a snow tunnel this year. After a late lunch, we sadly packed up and headed home.

Sometimes the sleds leave the track! No injuries this year though.

I kicked off 2017 with all sorts of fun. I took my niece Madi on a “day with Aunt Becky” before she went back to college. We worked out, went shopping, had lunch (and dessert!), and saw a movie.

Then I went to a local MIE Expert event. It’s my Microsoft teacher group who connects via social media, notes, and face-to-face meet ups occasionally. It’s always fun and we learn a lot from each other.

I had some time alone with Haley this week while JT was at baseball camp with Jim. She spent it very active… gymnastics followed by a mile run in which Haley shaved one minute off her last time. Then we played Jenga and built a really tall tower – twice!

We have really enjoyed the lull between Christmas and New Year’s, when there isn’t much going on and we can all be home together.

One of the fun things we did one rainy day was make bread for Grandpa and Grandma Cole, which was JT’s idea. Actually, I wrote that incorrectly. The kids made bread. I watched. We were completely amazed at their baking skills (I don’t know why… they’ve been baking with me since they were little). They found the recipe, read it, simmered the oatmeal, checked the temperature before adding the yeast, mixed in the flour, all of it. And it was soooo good!

We also got ready for New Year’s Eve… by sporting our Alabama attire for our weekly shopping trip. Shockingly, no one said a word to us and we only saw two UW fans. We’re not really a college football town.

The kids have been enjoying their new books from Christmas. Haley has whipped through maybe five chapter books this break, and JT (who is more of a grazing type reader, having several books going at a time) is never far away from something non-fiction. Also, my parents bought Haley her own typewriter. Manual. She has typed two pages of two different stories and she is adorable.

On the big game day, we were torn. How would we cheer? Jim pledged to be neutral, and wore gray, and so did I. The kids both wore Alabama shirts and UW hats, and tried to cheer both ways. In the end, we felt ourselves leaning more toward Alabama… and they won anyway. We’re looking forward to another national championship next week!

We hosted lots of family and friends at our house on New Year’s Eve, and it is our nephew’s birthday too. We watched football, had a bonfire, played basketball, and celebrated New York New Year’s together. Then the over-40 crowd went home, the under-15 crowd went to bed, and those of us brave enough stayed up well past midnight. 😉

Haley had a secret plan to spray Preston with silly string after we sang to him!

The kids still have a few days of break left, but we’re back to work today. So we finished our family puzzle last night! This puzzle is the kids’ biggest yet – 500 pieces! I was proud of the way they stuck with it and worked for solid blocks of time to finish. I think it’s a new tradition.