Sunshine and Music

We've been enjoying the warmer temperatures this month by getting outside in the neighborhood parks more than usual this time of year.  With or without friends, with or without wheels, it didn't matter.  We take advantage of sunshine when we get it!

Here's more of our brave girl up off the ground!

Owen is getting excited about his upcoming soccer season!  Someone (Grandpa!) put it in his head that goalie is the place to be... We'll see how that translates to the team.  

And even the big kids like to play when it's finally "warm" outside again!

All that fresh air can make for some tired kids!  She's gone back to napping regularly and even puts herself to bed most times, as long as we let her take books to bed.  

When the sun goes down, we get some culture!  Owen was so excited to go see The 5 Browns in concert.  We have a couple of their CDs, and he's becoming more interested in music.  He was jumping up and down when I told him we were going (after he'd asked for the 10th time). :)  He was directing and dancing throughout most of the concert.  It started when he's usually in his pajamas, and he lasted up until the last song, but he was getting a little delirious by then. Nonetheless, we both enjoyed it a lot!

Then the adults got to go out for Valentine's night to the symphony!   They had a traveling cirque perform to the music, and it was a pretty amazing show with acrobats, jugglers, and aerial stunts.  It's always nice to get out for a date night once in a while.

Oh, the kids are also enjoying music in their weekly Kindermusik class together with their friends.  Owen is in grey; Hadley in the floral.  They get to be silly and sing and dance, and I only have one place/time to take them, so it's a win-win!

Party time!

Continuing our catch up of February... the sugariest month of the year!  It seems we always have a slew of parties and celebrations, between birthdays and Valentine's Day, this month. Apparently, you can never have too many cupcakes or candy when you are a kid.

We had Valentine's celebrations with our playgroup and with Owen's class. 

Owen helped me make Superhero valentines for his class out of a lollipop with a little cape and mask. He thought they were pretty awesome!  Thanks Pinterest!

One of the birthday parties we attended was at the gym where Owen used to take classes. I'd say he had a pretty good time remembering some of his old stunts.  It was pretty impossible to get a non-blurry picture of him, in fact, since he was in constant motion.

Hadley got to come, too, and was in heaven with her freedom to climb around on the equipment. (I always had to rein her in during Owen's class.) She was pretty fearless!  We may have a future gymnast on our hands. Her favorite was the high bar, which required a climb up a block podium that was so high she couldn't physically get up to the top by herself.  But, she didn't show any nerves in reaching out for the bar and swinging (and dropping) on her own!  Over and over!

But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.  This is her pouting when she had to share a rope swing. :)

And Carson, Owen's best buddy, got to join us, which was extra fun!  They all get along so well.

And of course, we have a special birthday in our house in February, too!  It's more fun because both of the kids know the birthday song now.  I'll have to get that on video soon. As Owen said, that's a lot of candles on that cake! :)  Yellow cake with toffee icing was enjoyed by all.

Owen was very excited about it, maybe more than the birthday boy, because he got his dad a Star Wars Lego set to work on together!  Just shy of 500 pieces.  He, er, they love it!

Driggs/Targhee Again

Well, another 2 weeks has flown by, so let's catch up!  The first weekend in February, we headed over to Driggs again, because we wanted to do a little getaway to snow country. We rented a condo for a couple of nights, just down the street from our favorite Korean food restaurant.  

The kids were excited for some adventure, but Owen was not interested in skiing 'down the big hill' with me at Targhee after his fence run-in the week before. That was disappointing, but I was able to take the local shuttle up to the ski resort for a morning of skiing alone.  It would have been perfect, but high winds shut down two of the main ski lifts, so everyone was crowded over onto the other main lift, which gave long wait times. :(

The wind was blowing so hard that I could feel it pushing me backwards a bit while I was going down the slope. This is just off the lift, looking back to the valley below.

At lunch time, the family arrived, so the boys could try out the tubing hill. Unfortunately, whoever designed the track misjudged speed and resistance over the mini-hills, so everyone kept getting stuck 2/3 of the way down and having to get out and push or walk from there.

 

Hadley and I had to watch from the sidelines, because she didn't meet the minimum height restriction for tubing.  She wanted to go though!  Eventually, the wind drove us to wait inside. And, of course, she needed a snack!

More fun was had checking out the skiers and snowboarders at the base and climbing up the snow hill nearby.

Too bad the allotted snow/ski day was too windy to really enjoy, but the other draw to Driggs was the restaurants.  Since it's a touristy ski town, it has a bunch of great restaurants disproportionate to its size.  We had delicious Korean, Thai, and Mexican cuisine there.  We like to eat out, so our kids have some practice at keeping quiet while waiting for their food to arrive.  We'll be back, Driggs!

Return of the Sandbox

This is pretty unusual for February, but the kids returned to playing outside for an hour after lunch today.  Hello sunshine and 50 degrees and no jackets!  The sandbox is making its reappearance!  The kids were so excited.

Needless to say, most of the snow around town has melted with this warmth, so last weekend we headed over to Driggs on the west side of the Tetons for the end of the Great Snowfest. Unfortunately, they'd had some snowmelt and rain, too, so the snow sculptures were not as impressive as they had been the opening weekend. :(

But we did enjoy the Geotourism Center, where the kids could pretend to dogsled with a video screen portraying what it really looks like from a dogsled.

And fishing in the Tetons...

We met up with Owen's friend Brady and his parents at the dog sled.

And walked down to see some snowmobile races.  The boys were entranced!

But then we ventured out of the foggy valley up to Grand Targhee Ski Resort where the sun was shining.

The local ski club had bargain-priced ski lessons going on that day, so we had signed Owen up to do that after lunch.  Unfortunately it was a bit chaotic, and it didn't seem like he got much guidance. After an hour, he came in crying because he had apparently run into a soft fence.  Hopefully that doesn't scare him off of skiing forever!  Anyway, here he is before...

Anyway, Owen is also old enough now that he can be dropped off for playdates without me.  It's pretty amazing.  When I went to pick him up from one, this is how I was greeted! "Captain America!  Have you seen Owen?"  (His friend, Everest, is very into dressing up as super-heroes.  Something Owen has never really been into, so I had to get a picture.)

Hadley has been dressing herself for a couple of months now.  It's great, but now she even picks it out herself, which can be interesting.  Pink shirt and backwards pants with bright green socks?  Sure, that's fine, dear.  Sometimes Owen has the time and inclination to help her get dressed, even combing her hair!  And sometimes, when on her own, she comes running with her huge head stuck in her shirt, "I need helllllllp!"  It always makes me laugh, so I thought I'd share.

The other morning she hadn't had her coffee yet, apparently. (See her wild morning hair?) She was not making eye contact and holding the comics up to block prying eyes. It reminded me of Owen doing this at about the same age. By the way, the big girl bed is going pretty well!  She's stayed in there just fine at night, but has been dropping naps, singing to herself and reading books instead.

Lastly, Owen and I went to a "Mom and Son Date Knight" at our local Chick-Fil-A.  It was cute; Owen got to hang out with his best friend Carson and have his first ride in a limo! They were jumping up and down when they saw the limo, marveled at the changing lights inside, and helped themselves to some chilled, bottled water they found in the seat-side cooler.

FYI, I think I failed to mention that he had his 5-year check-up a month ago.  He's 43.5" tall and 43.5 lbs, so a lb/inch correlation. Ha! He also got up-to-date on his immunizations because we'll be registering for kindergarten in a month!  Can you believe it?!?