Winter Wonderland

I know you guys are sick of hearing about Bear Lake.  Sorry.  This is going to be all the adventure we are going to be able to afford for the next year or so, so get used to it people.  The kids are still excited to go, I am still excited to go, so try to be excited to hear about it (or, you know, just skip this post).   Hey, at least the scenery keeps changing so you have different pictures to look at!

It hadn't snowed at our house, but once we headed up some canyons we left fall and entered winter.  And it was beautiful:

(or at least it seemed beautiful to me in late November.  Ask me again in March, and I probably won't feel quite as rapturous about the snowy landscapes.)

Here is the view from the cabin deck as soon as we got there Friday evening, as the sun was going down:

The kids were just a little excited to finally be out of the car:

After turned the heater up (brrrrr!) and unpacked, we decided we were hungry.  We headed out to one of the local restaurants that was still operating (they are getting fewer and fewer).  It was a Mexican place and was all decorated for Christmas.  We ate chips and salsa until we thought we would burst.  After dinner we headed back to the cabin and just hung out in our jammies and then went to bed.  The first night away from home is always a rough bedtime.  The kids all started out together in the "kids room" downstairs.  After a few trips down the stairs reminding the kids that it is hard to sleep unless you are actually IN the beds had no effect, Arden ended up in the loft bedroom, and Dax in "Harry Potter's Room" under the stairs.  After that things quieted down pretty quick.  Ah, the joy.

The next day we woke up to a snowy morning.  We snuggled down in the warm cabin all morning, watching movies and doing crafts. (Crafts are Arden's favorite cabin activity, and she now expects me to provide at least one or two crafty activities per trip. Oriental Trading Company is sure making their $$ off of me lately). After lunch, we headed out to see if we could find anywhere to sled nearby.

Preston is ready to go!

Me and Cora are ready to go!

 We had to stop along the way and make a snow angel or two:

 And finally, we found a small hill and we were sledding!  Woooo!

 Cora has a hard time staying on her sled, but she has fun anyway:

 Arden and Dax started making "choo-choo trains":

Arden and Dax like to go down the hill on their own sleds, but Cora still likes to go down with Preston or me sometimes:

Maybe it is because we are easier to hold onto and keep the sled facing forwards, which is another thing Cora has trouble with.  

After we were all sledded out, we headed back to the cabin and took off our zillion layers of snow clothes. Soon the wind started blowing and the snow started falling pretty hard, so we settled in for a quiet evening.  Back to the crafts!  Me and the girls put together some elves we can use for Christmas ornaments or decorations later:

 The boys had fun playing "Star Wars Angry Birds" on my phone:

 The elves looked cute and cozy all lined up in the window as the storm blew outside:

We had some nice warm soup for dinner, then played some games.  Preston did "tickle monster" for a while, which makes the kids scream so loud that I am always worried someone is going to hear them and call the po-po.  Then we tried to settle down and watch another movie.  When bedtime rolled around, we decided to just let the kids be downstairs in the kids room together, and as long as no one was crying we would just let them do their thing and hopefully they would fall asleep eventually.  It took them quite a while.

After they were finally quiet, I snuck down the stairs to check on them.  In the kids' room there is a twin bed and a twin-over-full bunk bed.  Cora had been on the top bunk, Dax on the bottom and Arden in the twin when I tucked them in.  Somehow they all ended up falling asleep in the big bottom bunk bed together. Awwwwwww.  How adorable are these little stinkers?  I love it.

 Morning glory:

 We had breakfast, and played some more Old Maid:

After a lazy morning, we got all dressed up and headed to church in a nearby town.  The roads weren't plowed, but they weren't too bad (lucky for us the roads by our cabin are dirt, and dirt melts snow).  After we got back, it was time for me to clean up while the kids played some more and Preston packed up the car.  

We didn't do much but relax, but it is nice have a place to go for a change of scenery.  Who wants to come along next time?  And do you have a snowmobile?  

Best Report Card Ever

So guys....let's be truthful.  When I was in elementary school, I was a "good kid."  I got good grades, I was very quiet, I was pretty much teacher's pet.  I never got in any serious or even any non-serious trouble.  My sweet Arden has pretty much followed in my footsteps.  I am SO incredibly lucky that she is such a good kid.  I can trust that Arden is going to be good in school and bring home awesome report cards every quarter.

My boy, though...I didn't know what to expect.  Dax is so sweet.  He tells me 10 times a day that he loves me (awesome).  But my sweet is not always quiet, my boy is not always good at sitting still, and....let's just face it, he is not always gentle.  

I knew I might be in trouble when it was the second or third day of kindergarten and I walked Dax to his "line" in front of the school.  The kindergartners all stand in a line until the bell rings and their teacher brings them in to the school.  Dax saw that nice, long, straight line and got a big smile on his face.  Before I knew what he was doing he ran into the back of the line (lit-er-al-ly), resulting in what I would call "kindergarten dominoes."  Nice.  Sorry, 12 other moms standing next to me.

I decided I'd better check in with his teacher every couple of days to see how things were going.  She told me that Dax was having a hard time staying on task, and was also being too rough with the kids on the playground:  he was pushing, not looking where he was going and running over people, stuff like that.  

Not good.  

Every day I wold talk to my boy and remind him he needed to be careful and kind.  About two weeks after school started it was picture day! The kids were in a line again, waiting their turn to get their pictures taken.  The girl behind Dax ran into him for whatever reason.  Dax turned around and pushed her, knocking her and another girl to the ground.  Result:  Two crying girls at picture time, and Dax in the Principal's office.

The Principal's office.  Two weeks into kindergarten.  It was a dark day, people. (Remember?)

After I got finished freaking out (which took a while), I had Daxton sit down and write apology notes to the girls.  We talked and talked and talked about it.  I couldn't understand what was going on.  Dax had never hurt anyone on purpose in preschool.  Sure, he bounces off people and playfully tackles them, but this was different.  Each day for the next week I checked with Dax's teacher to see how things were going.  She said he was doing better, but I never knew if and when there might be another "incident."  

One night his teacher called me to ask if I could help her cut some things out for the kids, which I had volunteered to do.  When she called and said, "Hi, this is Mrs. XXXX," my stomach seriously dropped to my toes faster than you would believe.  I was so relieved when I found out she wasn't calling to tell me about something bad Dax had done.  

I knew report card time was coming, and I was slightly apprehensive (or maybe downright scared).  I know it is KINDERGARTEN and who cares about kindergarten report cards, right?  I do, I guess.  I was worried that if Dax wasn't able to do well in kindergarten, first grade would only be worse.  I was worried Dax might get a "rep" as the bad kid at school.  I was worried about ALLL sorts of things.

Finally, the day arrived.  When I opened up that manila envelope I really had no idea what to expect.  I gathered my courage and unfolded it.  It was almost all 3s!  (That is best you can get on the weird system they use at that school).  SQUEEEE!  And his teacher also put comments on the bottom that I want to frame and/or possibly get tattooed on my body.  Here we go:

"Daxton is doing a great job in Kindergarten!  He has been working so hard and staying on task!"  (I didn't even add the exclamation points!!  (I know that I am a habitual over-user of the exclamation point, so obviously she is a woman after my own heart.)  

"His behavior has improved drastically"  YAY!  "Academically, he is excelling in all areas."  WAAA!?!  If I had the ability to do a back flip, this is when I would have busted it out.  "I love having him in my class."   

Daxton's teacher, I love YOU!

Poor Dax got lifted off the ground and hugged until he told me he couldn't breathe.  I felt so light, it seemed like I would float right off the ground.  Since Dax told me I couldn't hug him anymore, I told him I would take him out to lunch anywhere he wanted to go.  He chose Wingers a.k.a. "The Popcorn Place," and he wanted to go "with just mom." Preston was luckily working from home that day, and was so pleased with our boy that he offered to watch Cora while I took Dax to lunch.  We had a great time:

Want some ice cream, boy?  Then ice cream you shall have:

Arden did awesome too!  YAAAAAAAAY Arden!  I am so proud of her.  Lest you think we are playing favorites, she got to pick any place she wanted to go for dinner.  She chose McDonalds.  *sigh*   I really need to talk to her about aiming a little higher in the restaurant department.  I guess if you are seven, chicken nuggets, a meal with a TOY and a play land is the ultimate dining experience.  :)

Parent-teacher conferences were this week, and they were awesome!  I am such a lucky girl to have two such smart, good kids.  I can only guess that Dax was stressed while getting used to kindergarten those first couple of weeks, and now that he is all settled in it will be smooth(er) sailing.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.

(phew!)

Haunted Half Marathon

Yes, it is nearly mid-November, and I am finally getting around to blogging about something that happened October 26th...the Haunted Half.  I know, bad blogger.

This was my third half marathon this year.  I had a PR in the Dino Half back in May (1:56:49), and it was HARD.  I am just not that fast, and I was a-sufferin' the last 3 miles of that race.  Since I don't like to suffer, I am thinking that time might stand as my all-time PR forever and ever.  I was planning on just having a good time at this race, and trotting along at a comfortable pace and who cares how fast I went.

My dad and my sister Val signed up to do the race with me.  I liked the fact that this race didn't start until 9 a.m., so we just had to catch the bus by 7:30 a.m.  It still seemed early when my dad came down to carpool to the start.  My mom came too, and took this picture of us at my house pre-race:

It was a Halloween race, so we were encouraged to dress up.  I decided to be Wonder Woman!  I found a t-shirt with an attached cape that I thought would be fun, and actually found a running skirt with stars on it too.  I even found some awesome Wonder Woman socks that each had their own little cape.  My dad had a Halloween shirt (which was more than I expected) so we were pretty festive as we headed off to meet Val at the bus.

The race started up Emigration Canyon. It was COLD at the starting line!  We found Val (who wore devil horns for her costume) pretty quickly and it was nice to have her and my dad to talk to while we waited the hour or so for the race to start:

It was fun to see all of the different costumes, and there was even a guy riding around dressed up as the Headless Horseman on an actual horse!  Once it was nearly race time, I had to put my sweatshirt in the bag drop to make the trip down to the finish line, and then I was REALLY cold.  I was trying to get my iPod going and I was shivering so hard I was having a hard time pushing the buttons.

By the time the race actually started, I decided I would start running at a pretty good pace to ward off hypothermia.  Plus, the beginning of the race was a gradual downhill down the canyon, and I likes me some down hill.  Weeeee!

After a mile or two I finally started to get warmed up.  Also, my competitive juices started flowing and I started playing the "who can I pass next" game.  The canyon was beautiful and the weather was perfection. I noticed as I went along that there were quite a few other Wonder Womans (Wonder Women?) in the race.  However, not very many had 3 capes like me!  (My nephew informed me at our Halloween party that the real Wonder Woman doesn't actually wear a cape.  Cuz really, where is she going to attach it while wearing her bustier?  Good point, but back to the story).

I was bopping along pretty good, and when I was around mile 5 I checked my watch, and my pace was around 8:30 per mile.  I started thinking....Well.....I might as well try to see if I can finish in less than 2 hours. It sounded like a good idea until mile 7 when the UP-hills started.  There were a couple of brutal hills around mile 8 (and 9 and 10) when running around research park and the avenues.  I HATE running up hills more than I like running down hills, so pretty much any hill is brutal for me.  A couple of them were so steep that I had to pull out my "I am not trying to kill myself" mantra and walk for a bit.  The last couple of miles were through Memory Grove park, and that was my favorite part of the race.  The leaves were so beautiful, the sun was shining, and I was going downhill again!  Yay!

The finish line looked like a great big Jack O' Lantern, and we ran through the mouth.  My official chip time was 1:58:28.  It was a minute or two slower than my PR, but I felt MUCH better during and after this race, so I call it a win.  I couldn't stick around and watch Val and my dad cross the finish line since I had three back-to-back soccer games to get to, but they both had good races too.  It was a fun race!  

Now I am going to take it easy for a couple months...my next half marathon isn't until mid-May.  I am going to run the Ogden Half Marathon.  Should I try to beat that PR??

Hmmmmm...

Time for a Soccer Break

Last Saturday was the last soccer games of the fall season.  It is kind of weird to not have 3 soccer practices and 3 soccer games this week, but now that the sun goes down at 5:30 I guess it had to end.  I wanted to jot down a couple of soccer memories before I forget them.

Dax....what can I say?  He is one of a kind.  There was one soccer game a few weeks ago where he ran around the entire game like this:

 Bent over, both hands back behind him.  I thought he was trying to be an airplane or a pterodactyl or something like that, but no.  He informed me at halftime (with an "duh, mom" eye roll) that he was running like a Ninja Turtle.  Apparently in the new cartoon, they sometimes run like that.  This is the closest picture I could find:

Ah, life is never boring with the Dax-man around.

Cora is a good little soccer player.  The coach's daughter on her team is a crazy good soccer player.  The last game Cora really wanted to score a goal or two, and she was really trying hard and doing great. The only problem was, when Cora would get the ball and start dribbling it towards the goal, her soccer-phenom friend would run up next to her and kick the ball away from her and score.  Here is a picture of it about to happen:

It got to the point that by the end of the game, Cora would be running and kicking, and hear her friend coming up behind her.  Cora would then turn and start kicking the ball in the wrong direction just so she didn't get it taken from her.  So funny!  

She was still rightfully proud of herself, and sang about it in the car on the way home:

Look out world.  She is a champion, and you're gonna hear her roar!

I am soooo thankful for the kids' coaches.  Cora's coach is so nice, and has made her first try at soccer so fun.  Dax's coach is so patient and understanding.  He is a competitive guy but he never gets upset with Dax when he is playing half Ninja Turtles and half soccer instead of all soccer like everyone else.  Arden's coach is awesome.  She has been lucky to have the same coach her entire soccer career, and she thinks he hung the moon.  He makes practices so much fun, and Arden's favorite game is when the coach runs like crazy around the soccer field, and the girls get to kick soccer balls at him and try to hit him.  If they succeed, whoever hit the coach with the ball gets to choose an animal, and then the coach acts like that animal as he runs like crazy around the field again until another ball hits him and a new animal is chosen.  Arden likes to choose monkey or elephant best.

I should get that on video sometime. (Just kidding, coach)

Halloween Twenty Thirteen!

Another Halloween is in the books.  They seem to be flying at me faster and faster, along with most other things.  Can it be November 3rd already?  

This year we planted Cora's and Dax's preschool pumpkin seeds in Grandma Zaugg's garden.  We tried to plant them in our sad little garden squares in prior years, but our backyard just doesn't get enough sun to grow good pumpkins.  We ended up with TONS of pumpkins this year though, but still decided we needed to hit the pumpkin patch for just one or two really big ones to carve.  Can't skip the pumpkin patch visit completely, can you?

Grandma's garden is pretty impressive, but still doesn't have a hay maze.  The kids chased each other around this thing for a good long time, and we had to beg them to come out.

The annual Zaugg Family Halloween party gives Preston the opportunity (and excuse) to play with dry ice.

This year, Cora wanted to be a raccoon.  Here she is, working her raccoon supermodel pose for all its worth.  I could just eat her face:

Here is Cora and friends singing us some Halloween songs at her preschool presentation.  This is my very very last preschool Halloween shindig.  *sniff*  *sniff*  

Cora had a great time at her preschool Halloween party!  They got to decorate cookies, and she brought her baby raccoon to help.  Cora's favorite thing about cookies is the frosting.  When we make cookies I have to put some frosting in a separate bowl for her because her idea of frosting a cookies is getting some frosting on your knife, and then skipping the cookie part and just putting the knife directly in your mouth, as shown below:

 I signed up to help with Dax's kindergarten Halloween party too.  I felt bad that the kids didn't get to wear their costumes to school, so I found some masks they could make.  There was a witch, a Frankenstein monster, a pumpkin head and a werewolf.  Dax chose the werewolf:

I signed up to help with Arden's party too.  They had lots of fun crafts and theirs.  Here is Arden, decorating a skeleton cookie:

After the school parties were over, I quickly got the kids into their costumes so we could start on the main reason for the holiday...candycandycandycandy!  Cora had worn her raccoon costume to the Zaugg family party, a friend's birthday party, a different friend's Halloween party and her preschool party, so she decided she wanted to wear her old witch costume for a while to change it up.  Fine with me, she is still adorable!

Arden wanted to be an angel.  This angel gave me a hard time smiling for pictures, but I caught at least one with a grin.  Don't let that halo fool you folks!

Dax, along with every other kid it seemed, was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  I made him pull up his mask to smile, but it was a little bright outside and he kept blinking:

Takes after me.  We quickly headed up to Grandma Wilson's to trick or treat.  I realized I hadn't gotten a picture of the kids all together yet, so here they are:

 We got a donut from Grandma Wilson, and then we quickly drove up to show Grandpa Haun the costumes.  More candy!  After that we quickly had dinner, added some more layers to the kids, and Preston took them around the neighborhood for trick or treat.  We didn't do a neighborhood Trunk or Treat this year, so we got quite a few more kids coming to our house than usual.  I had to steal some of Cora's candy to give to the last trick or treaters of the night (don't tell!).

We only carved three pumpkins this year because we are slackers.  Actually, Arden got so engrossed in watching Tim Burton's Corpse Bride the night we carved them that she couldn't be pulled away, and Preston couldn't decide what to put on his and the days flew by and we never carved it.  Here are the ones we did get done.  Dax wanted a spider, I wanted an owl, and Cora wanted a kitty cat.  Voila:

 The weather cooperated and we had a great Halloween 2013!