This Past Week

So, we just got home from skiing in Mammoth Lakes, California over the long weekend. Michael returned to San Diego two days ago with my dad and Aaron because he had to leave for his New York City interview early yesterday morning. Mom, Matthew, the boys, and I stayed an extra day and returned last night. Mom and Matthew went skiing in the morning yesterday and mom came home and watched the boys for me so I could ski in the afternoon. There was nice new powder on the mountain and Matthew and I had a lot of fun skiing through the trees. (For anyone who likes to ski at Mammoth, we found a really fun run yesterday -- if you take lift #5 up and go off the back side of the mountain, after you get past the first part of the run that is a little steep, go through the trees over on the right side of the run and it is a very nice run, especially if there is a foot or two of powder on the ground).

Oh, and on Monday we had a lot of fun because Kolby got to go skiing for the first time. Kids under the age of 6 ski for free at Mammoth, so we took advantage of that. He was so cute in his ski clothes, helmet and goggles and all. And his little skis were so tiny. We rode up the gondola to get to the ski mountain, and that was a major highlight of the trip for him. Once we got on the hill, he had a lot of fun. My dad gave him a little ski lesson and he did well for his first time. He went up the little rope tow lift on the bunny hill a couple of times before he said he didn't want to do that anymore and we went on a chair lift up higher on the bunny hill. He saw some little jumps on the way up and said he wanted to do that. Then we went up Schoolyard lift and had a last good run down that hill. It's a good thing that my dad is such a good skier, because he was able to ski with Kolby and then kind of hold him up on the steeper part of the hill and get him to the parts that he could try skiing on his own. At the very end Kolby got tired and we took off his skis and Dad skied down to the bottom of the hill with Kolby on his shoulders -- I wish we had a video of that part. We did get some clips and photos of Kolby skiing which I will definitely post later on. That sure was a fun experience to see him ski -- Michael commented that he is looking forward to when we can ski with all of our boys.

Anyways, we left the cabin last night around 7pm and got to the house a little after 1am. We got the car unpacked and the kids in to bed, and I went to sleep around 2am. Isaac woke up to eat at 4am, and I woke up holding him on my lap on the couch at 5am and found the empty bottle sitting on the floor at my feet. Then, because Isaac has had a bit of a stuffy nose the last couple of days, he woke up at 6am and I got him to go back to sleep by giving him his pacifier. Then he woke up again at 7am, and since I could hear Camden starting to talk through the baby monitor I gave up on the idea of sleep and just got up. So I'm kind of out of it today, but that extra day of skiing was worth it all.

I wrote our weekly update on Sunday afternoon, so here it is:

Well, I am writing this on Sunday, January 20th, even though I won’t have a chance to post it until we get back to the house in San Diego and have internet access. Right now we are in Mammoth – about 6 hours north of San Diego – at my parents’ cabin. We got up here late Friday night and Michael arrived yesterday evening with my dad – Michael had an interview he was flying in from and Dad had a business meeting yesterday morning, so they came up later. It’s nice being up here. I think the thing I like the most about coming to the cabin is that there is no school or work or other errands to run, so everyone is together hanging out the whole time. There’s about 8 feet of snow on the ground outside, and some of us got a chance to go skiing yesterday. In the morning I went with Mom and Aaron while Matthew watched the boys and then Mom traded in the afternoon and Matthew joined us. I love to ski. We had a lot of fun, especially going off some jumps and doing quite a few black diamond runs. Matthew and Aaron have both passed me up – they are both faster and better skiers than I am now since I’ve been out of practice for a while (and I am more cautious than I used to be). But I think I did a pretty good job of keeping up.

Before we came up to Mammoth, we also had several other fun things happen this week. Last weekend we went to the stake conference meeting at my parents’ church. We really enjoyed the Saturday evening meeting, which focused on parenting. One of the speakers had five boys (so we felt like we could relate to lots of the experiences he shared). One idea that he shared was to not only have one night each week devoted to family time, but to have another night each week devoted to individual time with each child. We liked that idea, especially with all of our boys being so close in age. I think we are going to try doing that once we get back from vacation – one night a week one of us will take one of the boys out and let them pick a fun activity to do. That should be fun.

Since we last wrote, Michael has had several interviews. He has been to Cincinnati Ohio, Dayton Ohio, Spokane Washington, Gainesville Florida, and Rochester New York. He had good experiences at all of these interviews, and it looks like it is going to be difficult to choose how we are going to rank all the programs because there are so many good ones to choose from. And I am glad that Michael only has one interview left to fly to – he is going to New York city this week. Then the only others he has left are a transitional year interview in San Diego a few days before we leave, and one last transitional year one in La Crosse, Wisconsin that we are all planning on driving to as a family the day after we get back to Milwaukee.

On Monday Erin Devenberg, my best friend from high school, came and visited. She and her mom came and stayed for lunch, and the boys had a lot of fun playing with them. It was great to see her again, and she got to come back for another short visit on Friday morning before we left. I can’t believe it had been over four years since I had seen Erin before that – she had never even seen any of the boys before – but she moved to Redding (in northern California) several years ago and we just hadn’t been able to make it to San Diego at the same time since then. It was nice to talk and catch up on each others’ lives.

I have also had fun playing ping pong with Michael, Matthew, and Aaron several times. Mom and I had fun looking at some model homes and going on several fun shopping trips. I’m sure that there are lots of other fun things we did since we last posted, but I’m drawing a blank right now. Hope you are all doing well.