Skiing and Palatal Expander Off

Kids shook off their chess losses on Saturday and we headed up to White Pass in some terrible driving conditions on Sunday. But we made it up at 10am and skied until 3pm. We met up with a few friends there, 3 of them (3 brothers, all boys) on the bunny hill and 1 (girl) who was really fast, so she actually prompted the boys to go super fast. They had a ton of fun. Unfortunately Christian's sore throat made another appearance and he had to retreat to the lodge around 2pm. Olin stayed and skied with Ursula which made for a very motley crew - a small 7 year old boy, a tall 9 year old girl, her dad (Erik) and me. But Olin could have skied all day he was having so much fun following Ursula in his wedge stance. :) Dae took Christian to the lodge and then the car to warm up.

Oh another note so I remember: Christian got his palatal expander off last week.

Olin & Ursula

Conditions were actually quite good on the other side of White Pass, a side we've never been on. The runs are really wide and all blue over there. Lots of trees which the kids love. Reminds me of how much I loved Jumper's Paradise at Mission Ridge when I was a kid.

From me, to me. hahahaha. 

Stiff Competition

The kids did not have a banner day at Chess yesterday. They both qualified for the Open division (>800 rating) and we knew the competition would be stiff. Neither of them won one game :( They both got a bye, and Olin stalemated one game. So they ended up with 1 point and 1.5 points. It was a real bummer.

There were about 50 students in the Kindergarten through 6th grade Open division, and of those Olin was only 1 out of 2 total first graders. He was paired up against some pretty large opponents, as all the kids played each other, regardless of age :)

These are the only photos we got at the tournament!

Rock Climbing

We visited the Seattle Bouldering Project (rock climbing gym) in Seattle yesterday for fun. We stayed about 2 hours and had a great time! Turns out I'm the worst rock climber in the family. hahaha.

Christian. He's pretty adept.

Olin. By the end he was scrambling up pretty well.

Dae. It was his goal to conquer this (fairly challenging!) green one and he did!

I can't not laugh at this. Dae called me over because he was convinced his mom was on TV watching a golf tournament in California. She says she was at home in Tennessee, but this lady in the maroon visor on the right hand side looks EXACTLY like halmoni. We're still not convinced it's not her!

Picked up puo può in Bellevue, went to Cho Dang tofu in Federal way for dinner and then dropped her off at SeaTac to take a midnight flight to Taiwan. Cho Dang was the most packed we've ever seen it! Sunday nights must be their busy night.

The kids took a bunch of photos and were laughing the most about this one.....

this one....

and this one.

Storyville coffee at Pike Place

No School Week

While Christian was having his piano lesson, I am not sure what Olin was looking at.

School was canceled all week. Thursday afternoon they went over to AJ's house while I worked.

A beautiful card they made for Babz.

Christian found all these little golf sayings and printed them out. We were impressed! And his little hole in one with an "18" at the tee is so funny.

Drawing. During these days of absolutely nothing, they have been 1) drawing 2) making crafts like boats, airplanes, with paper, glue guns and plastic 3) cooking 4) playing in the snow although interest in that waned after a couple of days. They have played Minecraft for about an hour a day on the iPad but overall they have kept very busy with their crafts.

I am "Melanie" and the card is "from" them. No love. :) By the way, on Valentine's night we went to Aki sushi for a very yummy dinner.

They took an epically long bath today (1 hour +) and Christian emerged with all the old blood washed out from under the old nail. 

Today Christian was eating lunch with his head resting on his hand and said "do you know why I eat like this? Because my head is really heavy, and my neck gets tired". So funny. So true.

Snow Day #3

It's starting to feel like 2 winters ago when we had 8 canceled school snow days or something. We're on Day 3 and I am just hoping that they open school tomorrow so I don't have to figure out childcare!

Kids came with me to work for half day yesterday and then I dropped them off with a friend for the second half of the day. Here is their camp I set up for them in our waiting area. My office is very small so there's really no room anywhere else for them to hang out. They did great, though.

Snow is pretty deep

Kids built this sled ramp next to our driveway

Tubing with Safranski girls

Walking in sunny snow is the best, in my opinion

Korean noodle lunch

Anniversary Wrap-Up and Snow Days

Flowers from Dae

Daily sledding on the way home from school

Olin's report on Siberian Tigers. Who knew they ate small Asan bears?

This was our anniversary dinner. We did not in fact make it to Wine O' Clock because Dae got called in (even though he wasn't on call and specifically took it off for our anniversary!). So the kids and I ate an Olin-crafted Top Chef concoction and picked up Mandarin House to go. Dae made it home about an hour later and we enjoyed a nice family evening. It was better than it sounds. haha.

This is the upkeep for our pellet stove. Dae always vacuums it and the kids like to help out but it's too loud so they put on their Vitamix ear protection.

Olin making Valentines for his class. They are sticky darts.

He was taking forever to make each one - like 7 minutes per valentine. Turns out he was writing on the most minuscule piece of paper possible and then attaching each one with reversed blue masking tape attached to the dart. Christian, in a hurry to have a partner make a snow fort, finally went over to help him with his task and it significantly decreased production time. 

Readin'

Fort.

Finally! I have been asking any family member to gift me this cookbook. I wasted no time tagging my priorities (1's, on top) and recipes that piqued my interest but didn't make the first round (side tags). Christian, ever the keen observer, nicely called me out on several non-1's that I had mistakenly kept on the top portion.

Every day I'm shovelin'. Dae wanted to make sure I noted that he was out here too. He's a surprisingly good shoveler; if only it happened more often.

Snow Week

We had our first real snow of the year on Monday and a 2 hour delay on Tuesday. Kids have been wearing their snow clothes to school every day and we went sledding twice. It is actually snowing right now (Friday) and it's really pretty. We had planned to take the train to visit Mal and Didi in Portland but we got notice yesterday that our cross-country train was already running 6 hours behind and we still had two more days until our trip! I can only imagine how far behind it is now. So we canceled our trip and got a refund. Bummer.

And.....Happy 11th Anniversary Babz!!! We plan to have another annual family date night at Wine O'Clock in Prosser if roads allow. 💕💕☃☃

Nighttime sledding with girls. All 5 of them fit in the back of the Suburban!

School in the morning.

Christian has been making lots of origami, totally free-handed. This morning he made a seahorse (above) and a penguin.

Continued progress.

So funny. An apology post-it for the "axadint". Olin will play with Christian's stuff and inevitably the legos fall apart or magnets break up and Olin gives himself a very hard time about it. (I'm sure it's because Christian has historically given him a very hard time about it!)

Melody and I are still at it. Anytime I craft an e-mail to the spelling club parents I have to go over it with a fine-toothed comb and make sure there are no spelling errors! hahaha!