Jared's Science Fair

Jared's teacher made the science fair optional for his class. He was so excited to do a project though. He wanted to do an engineering project. He came up with testing Lego buildings on a shake table to see which ones were more stable. What a perfect project for a 10 year old boy! What could be more perfect than building with Legos and then destroying them! It really was a great project. I just wish he hadn't waited for the night before to do the poster...

Out of the whole 4th grade his was one of only two projects that received an honorable mention.

Skyler 9 Months

How can 9 months of pregnancy last an eternity and nine months with a new baby go so fast?!  It's hard to believe that Skyler is nine months old already.  He's changing so quickly and it breaks my heart to realize he won't be a baby much longer!  What a cute little boy he is growing into though!

Skyler is 16 lbs. 11 oz. now.  I can't go anywhere without everyone commenting on how happy he is.  He has such a great personality and loves to get any one's attention he can.  When I got these pictures taken a couple weeks ago he thought the flash was the funniest thing in the world and just laughed and laughed!

What Skyler loves at 9 months:  peaches, bananas, watching his siblings dance and jump around (really you should see how excited he gets when Kaitlyn is acting crazy), taking baths, going outside in the nicer weather in the stroller and the swing, smiling at everyone, talking on facetime to Grandma and Dad (if you ever try to have a "normal" phone conversation with this kid he is really stumped why he can't see you too!), Brazilian Samba music (thanks to our friend Moises), pulling hair, destroying any piece of paper he can get his hands on, grabbing anything within reach (including plates off the table!), and constantly being the center of attention.

What Skyler doesn't like at 9 months:  getting his face washed (really, if you want to see this kid unhappy just let him see you coming with a washcloth), taking naps when there is something more interesting going on, having Mom take her iPhone away (Did you know they have some pretty entertaining apps for babies? Unfortunately, he doesn't appreciate it getting taken away when he eats it instead of playing on it.)

Milestones:  Still waiting for that first tooth even though I have suspected it's coming several times.  He hasn't figured out crawling yet either but I know that's going to happen any day and I am really appreciating that he will still stay in the spot where I put him down!

loving being outside one of the first spring-like days

What a good sport.  His brothers are huge into Minecraft right now and made him his own mine cart to push him around the house in!

Love this picture with big brother!

Bad Luck?

All winter I've been wanting to get a babysitter and go skiing with Jason for a date. Most of our skiing is done with the kids or alone. Especially this year since someone has to watch Skyler. I decided one morning to use the day care up at Snowbasin on Jason's day off so we could ski together. The other kids were all in school and two feet of powder had just fallen. I was so excited but along with all the fresh snow the storm had knocked out the power at Snowbasin. We got there and found a freezing cold daycare room and decided instead to keep Skyler warm by the fireplace in the lodge and we had to take turns skiing again.

So it's March already and there's not a lot of snow in the mountains this year so we were running out of time. Jason's mom offered to come up and watch Skyler for the day yesterday so we jumped at the chance. Conditions weren't great but at least we could ski together! So imagine our surprise when we pulled into the parking lot, looked at the mountain and saw that none of the lifts were moving! There were strong wind gusts and they couldn't run any of the lifts to the top of the mountain. The only thing open was Little Cat and Becker (the intermediate lift that only goes half way up.) How can it be so hard to find a day to ski together? For a minute we thought about just going home. But Jason's mom had come all the way from Orem to babysit and we hated to waste the day. We finally decide to do a couple runs. After all we were there with all the equipment. We might as well do something. I braced myself for a cold ride on the chairlift in the wind. We are so spoiled with the gondolas there that I rarely ride chairlifts. I started to panic a little after we got on the lift and I realized if the wind got the chair swinging too much I could end up motion sick. The ride wasn't nearly as bad as I anticipated though. We explored some places we usually don't ski. Just when we were starting to get bored of the limited part of the mountain we could access someone told us John Paul was open.

John Paul is the hardest part of the mountain. It's the area the Olympic downhills were held in 2002. There is one easy way down which I've done a few times. The rest are black diamonds. I reminded Jason I don't ski black diamonds but what else were we going to do? The rest of the mountain was closed. The wind was really whipping when we got up to the top of the lift. We hurried to get off the top of the ridge out of the wind. Then with butterflies in my stomach I saw the hill I was going to have to go down. It was steep but there was no turning back now! I was proud of myself to get down my first black diamond without even falling. I surprised Jason and even myself a little when I said "That was fun! Let's do it again!" So we spent the rest of the day having fun skiing black diamonds. We had lunch at the John Paul lodge with an amazing view! It was warm, the snow was slushy, and the wind was whipping in our face. But looking on the bright side, it kept the crowds away and we had the mountain almost to ourselves!

So the day didn't turn out the way we planned. Maybe you can call that bad luck. But I couldn't have asked for a better day.