Oh The Places He'll Go

At three he was a bunny, just playing in snow
Today it's as if he's almost a pro!

His fave is Jug Glades he heads straight for the trees
I can't even follow! Poor me, oh poor me.

Dream and Scream's next like he's racing world cup.
At the base he says, "Mom, I was ripping it up!"

Sometimes we crash and we lay where we fall.
And sometimes we'll toss a little snow ball.

We chit chat on the lift and eat some starburst.
As we get close to to top, I prepare for the worst.

But he just hops off and starts to cruise
And I fall down and often get bruised.

He has a great teacher, Dad's number one!
Dad is the one that makes skiing fun!

Last weekend Dad took him straight down Mule Shoe
A black diamond that scared me till age 32!

In powder, on groomers, steeps, jumps, bumps, and trees
Sunny, or windy and 14 degrees

You'll find Luke at Eldora all over the place,
Tearing it up with a smile on his face!

Thank You Notes

Emily Post says you have a year to write your wedding thank you notes. Does anyone know the policy for your fifth birthday? We did a big push to get the thank yous out for the kids who attended the party, but the family thank you notes have been a long time coming. I had been writing it in my planner every week, and then I don't know what happened, but tonight we were back in business.

Our strategy is this:

1.) I write everyone's name on a list

2.) Luke writes the person's name at the top and his name at the bottom and then tells me something to write in the middle.

It seems simple, but there are so many ways it can go wrong. First of all, I have terrible handwriting. My r looks like a v. Luke read back the letters in Scott to me as "S - O - O - H". So there is that. And Luke is also a perfectionist, so that leads to other problems. Many tears were shed on Valentine's Day over an "A" that looked like "It's pants were falling down."

So today, Luke was writing while I was making chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers for dinner. I needed to spell out every name, and the list was only useful in creating a sense of satisfaction when a name could be crossed off. Chicken, pineapple, red pepper skewers are sort of labor intensive for a week night so I didn't always know where I was in the spelling of a name. This led to an Anthony with two Os. Tragedy. Luke was also trying to write in block letters and had trouble with an N. I had a huge internal debate about showing him how to do it. Because all prior Ns had been written backwards. Do I show him the correct way and risk having to redo all the thank you notes? Do I dare contemplate making a backwards block letter N? Rest assured I did the right thing. And I was rewarded with a resigned sigh, "If you are right, then all the other Ns I have made are backwards." Sigh.

Such a relief! Thank you notes are finished!

* Please allow another 1-2 weeks for me to find stamps, envelopes, addresses, etc.

April Fools

Happy April Fools Day! We celebrated early on Sunday for many reasons. First, who has time to create an elaborate meal like this during the week? Second, I was confused about what day April Fools day was and I needed to cook the meatloaf cupcakes sooner rather than later. Luke and I got recipes for fried eggs (marshmallows and apricot) and cupcakes (meatloaf and mashed potatoes) from the Family Fun website. Luke had a good time helping me make the eggs, but when I started him on stirring the ground turkey and egg to make the meatloaf he said, "I can't stir this anymore because it reminds me of a bowl of worms and it's making me feel sick." I don't think that was the kind of reaction Family Fun was predicting when it came up with these fun recipes to cook with your family. Or maybe I was supposed to surprise my husband and children with warm cupcakes when they walked in the door from school and work? Yes, that is probably it.

Meatloaf was an interesting dinner choice for me, because, as everyone knows, I hate meatloaf and have been known to cheer when my mom's meatloaf was ruined. There was also an episode of Family Feud that I watched with my siblings some 22 years ago where the topic was "Favorite Foods" and a little old Gramma said, with a gravelly smokers voice, "Meatloaf." I had never laughed so hard at an episode of family feud. Survey says? Ding, ding, ding: Meatloaf!!!

Who knew that people liked meatloaf? I guess you can't believe everything you see on TV though because, while I choked down two cupcakes, and Luke forced down a no-thank-you-bite, and Dave said, "wow, I don't need to drown these in ketchup!" there are still quite a few left over. So I packed 6 cupcakes in Dave's lunch for today, and I will be going out for lunch!

Jack Not Rolling Over

Well, I am not having a lot of luck with Google Video. My video of Jack Not Rolling Over keeps uploading in a pretty low quality. But as you can see, he is clearly not rolling over. Or fuzzily not rolling over.

My video of Jack Not Rolling Over is listed in a genre that contains other videos such as Jackson not rolling over, Kyra not rolling over, Tate not rolling over, and if you can believe it, another Jack not rolling over.

Of course I had to check them all out and see whose baby was closest to rolling over and if they looked older or younger than Jack. Not competitive at all here. Spoiler alert: the Tate not rolling over video has a sequel called Tate Walking, where we learn that he does in fact learn to move and also grows into his big head.

And now for the show:

Appeasing Everyone

After dinner, Dave was paged and had to work. Luke went to the bathroom, I put Bean out, and put Jack on the jiminy and started the dinner dishes. I heard a thud and then a yell so I ran to the bathroom with a tiny ice pack in one hand. Luke had hit his head on the bathroom sink and he was crying. I gave him the ice pack and a kiss and a hug, but he seemed determined to see how loud his cries could echo off the bathroom walls. Since I thought he was being overly dramatic, I told him to lie down in my bed for a minute and I would be back to check on him because now Jack was also crying. I picked Jack up and went to check on Luke, who was laying in my bed, still crying and holding the ice pack to his head. He said,

"I think I have a bump."

So I immediately went into panic mode and ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack. I came back with a bag of frozen peas. An open bag of frozen peas. I handed it to Luke, who looked skeptical. I said,

"Just try it and see how it feels. I'll be back with something better, because now Bean is barking to be let in."

So I ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack and to let Bean in. On the way back to check on Luke I heard,

"Mommy?"

And I said,

"The peas."



Bean was a big help with cleanup, but I am still finding peas after 2 days.

To prevent future injuries we came up with the following solution:

Poor Bean

Poor Bean. Since his 14th birthday he seems to be falling a lot more often. We have had so many incidents with him over the past 4 years and every time something happens we think, "Is this the end?" And I sob and sob and start planning his memorial service. And then he miraculously pulls through and we are so happy. And then he eats a bag of whole wheat flour out of the lazy susan and poops all over the dining room and we think, "huh." And the cycle continues.

Last night Jack was laying on the jiminy and we were all sitting around staring at him with bated breath, waiting for him to roll over. This is a nightly occurrence now, and I think we'll keep up this vigil until he does in fact roll over, or worse, we pick him up from daycare and find out that it happened there.

Bean thinks if we are all sitting around staring at, and loving something on the floor, it should be him, poor guy. So he keeps walking past, muttering under his breath. He can't get too close because of the arches over the jiminy, but he managed to get close enough so that when he fell last night he landed almost on top of, but actually right next to Jack. Poor, poor bean. Because after the indignity of the fall he ended up with a handful of his fur in Jack's iron grasp. I was about 24 inches away but I had to dive forward in slow motion with a "Noooooooooooooooooo" because I have had my hair in that grasp, and Dave has even had chest hair in the grasp and it hurts, hurts, hurts.

The Bean of yesteryear would have let out a scary growl. The Bean of 1994 might have even bitten someone. But Poor Bean made a noise that sounded like this, "You have got to be kidding me with this. Can someone get him away from me?"


Poor Bean.

(I have a great video of Jack not rolling over, but I am having technical difficulties uploading it. I hope to post it soon.)

Luke's First Powder Day

Well, I wasn't going to do any more posts until I had a chance to post Jack's birth story, but I guess I am never going to get around to that, so I am just going to start posting things again.

We went to Eldora yesterday and Dave made this video. Enjoy!

Modern Man

"Mommy, if you are still alive when I am an adult, will you come watch me race my dirt bike and cheer for me?"

"Of course!"

"You can sit with Ruby, most of my races will probably be after she gets off work so she can come watch."


I love how Luke is planning for a two career family. This is a little discussion that combines two of his interests: death (specifically mine) and a future marriage to Ruby.

Bedtime Procrastination

It was probably mostly motivated by the desire to procrastinate, but Luke and I had a good talk about the new baby the other night. It started with a "I don't like having my room downstairs." And ended with, "When John Paul and I both have rooms downstairs, he might come in my room and we can talk after bedtime." In the middle there was some of this, "I wish he would come out right now an be the same size as me." To which I could only reply, "Ouch."

Warren Miller

We took Luke to his first Warren Miller movie this week. Back in the day we always kicked off the ski season with several bottles of beer and Warren Miller's latest movie about extreme skiing. Back in the day it seemed a lot tamer, just maybe heli-skiing and triggering an avalanche and staying just ahead of it. Maybe it had something to do with imagining my 4 year old trying some of the tricks, but I think putting on a little parachute and skiing/flying down the Eiger is a little crazy.

The next morning, Dave said, "Luke if you are skiing and you come to the edge of a cliff, what are you NOT going to do?"

He said, "I am not going to go around it."