QOTD

Preston: Hey Mom, do you know what claustrophobia is?

Me: A fear of enclosed spaces.

P: Nope. Fear of cats. 

Golf

I guess Spring is actually here to stay (but now that I say that, we will probably get a freak snowstorm)! John and Preston golfed for the first time this year tonight. They even saw an adorable little duck family!

The boys have already been asking about the summer golf class so I guess I better get them signed up for it!

QOTD

QOTD, courtesy of Preston as Archer is opening the car door for me:

"Archer will be able to find a woman to marry very easily. But then he's going to have to open doors for her for the rest of his life."

Almost Spring

We spent this past weekend camping at the ski mountain for the boys' ski race finals. 1 day of fun skiing in beautiful sunny weather + 2 days of racing in beautiful sunny weather = the boys are not ready for the season to end! They were starting to get a little burned out on skiing, but now they just aren't quite ready for it to be done. We have one more day...kind of a wrap up, fun day, and that's that. 

But don't worry. They won't be bored. Soccer practice started for Preston today, and the other 2 will start after Spring break. 

But back to finals. The boys did awesome. They had tons of fun and raced hard. Archer win a trophy for slalom which he was super excited about. The other 2 were crazy competitive with each other. Bryton beat Preston by a tiny bit in slalom the first day, which made Preston mad of course...but he came out the 2nd day determined to beat B in giant slalom and beat him he did! 

So proud of these boys of mine. Skiing wouldn't be my choice for them for competitive sports, but I love that they all love it and can do it together. I am also starting to appreciate the "togetherness" of the ski team families. It's a much different atmosphere than your standard team sports, and everyone helps each other out and pitches in for pretty much anything and everything. (Maybe because we spend so much time together!)

I have tons of clean-up to do from camping, plus lots of laundry and wet ski gear to deal with, but it was worth it to see my boys all so crazy excited about this weekend, and the big smiles each time they crossed the finish line. I need to remember that for next year when I am feeling DONE with skiing!

Preston

Bryton

Archer

The trophy winner! 

My little goofballs!

And my view right now: soccer practice!

QOTD

Preston: "I wonder who invented reverse psychology?"

Bryton: "Probably a famous scientist. Like Frankenstein."

QOTD

Preston: Hey Mom, I think you could be the first girl president if you wanted to.

Me: I don't think I'd want to be the president. That's a lot of responsibility.

Preston: Yeah, but then we could move and live in the White House. And you wouldn't have to worry about cleaning the house!

Me: Right. I'd just have to worry about running the country. That's a little bit bigger of a deal.

Preston: Well, you could just say "yes" to everything.

Double Digits!

Preston turned 10 on January 1st! I can't believe it's been 10 years since I gave birth to this boy.

He's such an amazing kid. He's sweet, a friend to everyone, loves school, reading, skiing, soccer, video games...pretty much everything! Even though he's getting older, he still loves to have some cuddle time with his mom occasionally. I will be so sad when he doesn't want to hang out with me anymore! Sometimes he will disappear into his bedroom and we find him in there engrossed in a book. He loves our chickens, and is definitely the chief caretaker of them. He usually does it without complaint! He can tell them apart and knows their names. I have no clue which one is which! 

Homemade birthday donut (on his actual birthday)

Archer made Preston a cake in his easy bake oven!

The day after his actual birthday (the day before his party), the boys had their first ski race of the season. It was technically a practice race since it was just with their team, but the boys took it pretty seriously and had a great time! 

Archer

Bryton

Preston

We celebrated his birthday by having some of his friends over for "decorate your own donuts" and then John took the boys to see Star Wars. 

Oh man. As I'm looking through pics on my phone I'm realizing that I might be *slightly* behind on blogging. Between Christmas and New Years is such a crazy time for us. Besides the actual holidays, John and I celebrated 14 years of marriage, the boys had 4 days of ski camp (we skipped one day though!), and then Preston's birthday of course. More on those another day!

QOTD

P: Bryton do you know what R.I.P. stands for on a grave?

B: when it breaks!

P: what?! No. I said R.I.P. not W.I.B.!

QOTD

"You are a man of your own will, Bryton. You are in charge of your own body." - Preston

Throwback Thursday

I found this picture this morning of Preston & his cousin Jackson. So CUTE! These boys are still adorable, but much bigger 9 years later!

First Camping Trip of 2015

This weekend was our first camping trip! I am amazed that #1 it is the beginningg of March and we're CAMPING, #2 I didn't freeze, and #3 it was at the ski mountain (and I still didn't freeze)! 

It was another warm, sunny weekend for skiing. There are definitely some bare spots starting to show, but they were still able to have a race this weekend. We headed up to the mountain early Saturday morning for Preston to practice, and then today was race day.

I was so proud of him...his first run was 20 seconds faster than his best run last race! He almost wiped out (it was slushy!), but he recovered and went on like nothing had happened (meanwhile I was watching with my heart in my throat!).

There are technically a few weeks left in the season still, but I'm not sure the snow is going to last that long. Everything was such a muddy mess! Ender was so excited that she got to come along, but between her and the kids, the trailer needs a complete wipe down. I guess I know what I'll be doing this week! 

Winter Stuff

Last night was the "school night" at the Spokane Chiefs, so we took the boys to their first hockey game. The seats were decent, and the game was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, we had to leave pretty early because we had to get up super early this morning for Preston's first ski race.

Preston has been on the ski team for about 2 months now, but we had decided that he would just practice this year, not race. Wellll...with the weather as crazy warm as it has been, some of the other mountains are closed, or have really reduced hours, so "our" mountain had an extra race today and Preston decided to go for it. He raced two runs and had so much fun! He said today was "the best day ever!!!"

B making first tracks in the powder super early this morning.

Preston ready to go!

Mid-race

Crossing the finish line!

Archer relaxing in the snow (I thought he was going to fall asleep!)

B goofing around

Celebratory root beers :)

Birthday, take 2

We had Preston's "friends" birthday party this past weekend at Strike Zone (it's a Nerf gun arena place). It was so much fun, and despite the fact that there was a crazy amount of 8-9-10 year old boys there, it was pretty fun. Even a few of the dads got in on the action! We had quite a few boys show up, and even though it was pretty loud, Strike Zone was definitely a good place for it! 

I didn't get a good picture with all the chaos, but we did a "build your own" Minecraft "cake" - brownies with green frosting (dirt), Rice Krispie treats (made with chocolate and regular Rice Krispies, for coal), little bundles of red licorice (TNT), red jello (lava), and blue jello with gummy fish (water).

The next day was spent skiing, as are all of our Saturdays. Preston is still loving the race team, and B & A have definitely far surpassed my skiing abilities. I'm still working on enjoying the weekend being consumed by skiing. I'm not there yet, but hopefully soon! I do really want to enjoy it since the other family members do, but it's not really my thing!

In other big news, we have a trip to Disneyland coming up! It's been a few years since we've been there. I was hoping for another cruise, but logistically, it's hard for John to take that much time off from work...and a spectacular deal kinda fell into my lap, so Disney it is! (And Legoland. Archer wouldn't want me to forget about that!)

Back at it

The boys were supposed to start back to school on Monday, but we had a snow day! Snow days are rare here...this might be the 2nd one we've had since having kids in school. We got A LOT of snow, and then it warmed up a bit to make for some crazy roads. I was happy for another day of break, but I think everyone was ready to go back to school the next day.

Break flew by. Preston joined the ski race team, so we will be making even more frequent trips to the mountain (which I'm not thrilled with, but he loves it, so what's a mom to do?!). 

After Christmas, John and I celebrated 13 years of marriage, followed by Preston's 9th birthday on New Year's Day. We kept the celebrations kinda low key, but we will be doing a "friends party" next week for Preston. He was pretty thrilled with his presents, but he only asked for 2 things so I'm pretty sure he knew what he was getting (a bow, and Skylanders Trap Team for his kindle). We decorated gingerbread houses, and played a lot of video games. No surprise there!

Birthday breakfast (pancakes, peanut butter, bananas, and whipped cream)

I just can't believe another year has passed, and my little boy is now such a big kid. Here are his current interests, at 9 years old:

1. Skiing. That's pretty big right now! He's been even more excited since joining the ski team. 

2. Science stuff. He loves science experiments. Definitely takes after his dad on that!

3. Reading. He told me that all he wanted for Christmas was books! Current favorites are anything by Rick Riordan and James Patterson (kids books obviously, not the adult ones!!), and Calvin and Hobbes. He got the complete Calvin & Hobbes set for Christmas and he is just about done with it.

4. Running/jumping/playing with Ender. 

5. Cub Scouts

6. Four square

We also had lots of snow on his birthday, and over the next few days. At one point, I think we had close to a foot. There was some serious snowball fights going on...so serious that they broke out the ski helmets and goggles! Silly boys!

I took the last picture at 10:00 at night! I love how bright it is outside when it snows, especially considering it (usually) gets dark here at about 4:30 right now.