Spring Snow

We had another storm hit Sunday evening into Monday morning leaving us with 5 inches of snow and school closings.  I cannot say that I was ever exited about this storm as this would be the 10th day out from school this year and I have way too much on my plate this week to take another day off.  Good thing my soul companion decided to stay home and help me organize myself so that I didn't freak out.  The kids on the other hand were thrilled and started Sunday night building what would eventually become a 9'4" snowman!

Sunday evening

Monday morning.  The original 8' beauty collapsed in the night, so this is the start of round two!

Placing the last piece.  Jared who doesn't like heights, said "oohh, this makes me nervous!"

The final record: 9 feet 4 inches!

This is the last photo we have before the snowman collapsed soon after the snowball fight that Liam and Jonah are prepping for began!

Spring

We celebrated the first day of spring yesterday by getting out all the Easter decor!  We brought out all the little birdies, stuffed bunnies and branches from a blooming tree that we cover in hanging eggs.  Jonah loves to "celebrate" this way and is looking forward to coming home today to sugar cookies made with sprinkles and others with frosting.  He requested both as this is the real reason we celebrate holidays in his mind, and how can you not have enough sugar cookies!!   Jared has even been won over after snubbing his nose at the little treats for years.  He's a snicker doodle man all the way!

But being that today I'm not teaching or doing fitness testing or visiting the PT guy,  I am cooking!   And besides it's freezing outside (high of 38 degrees, I'm not kidding) and I just watched a little flurry of SNOWFLAKES come down.  That little ground hog was completely out of his mind this year because Spring is defiantly not here.

But for the love of food and cooking and making a home filled with lovely smells here's whats going in in the kitchen now:

Roasted Chickpeas from here: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2012/02/spicy-roasted-chickpeas/
(my modifications:  cut chile in half, I never seem to have paprika so that gets left out.  I also cook them longer because I like a crunch)

Granola Here:  http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2009/10/coconut-and-cashew-granola.html
(my modification include 4 cups oats, 1/4 c syrup, 1/4c brown sugar, and usually no cashews or raisins)

Sugar Cookies:  no electronic version, so won't take the time to type out, but if you are interested in the absolutely best sugar cookies (made with whole wheat pastry flour and hand rolled butter) then let me know and I'll send it your way.

Caleb at 13

While Jared was with the boys in Utah, Caleb turned 13.   I will admit that I was disappointed to not be there to witness the transformation into teenage land!

Caleb, you continue to be one of those souls who takes life in stride, rarely getting too ruffled with anything from chaos and confusion, changes in plans or expectations, friends that come and go, bugging brothers, or parents with long to-do lists.  You generally stay on top of all that you have going on which at the moment includes your current class schedule of algebra, jazz band, symphonic band, drama (you were mortified to have to take this class as you didn't have another option, but you have really loved it), language arts...your most challenging class, and P.E. You also stay on top of piano, cello and orchestra in addition to soccer that started a few weeks ago and tennis that starts tonight.  You have also done a great job as the Deacons Quorum President this past year and have spent many Sunday's in service.

You are often up until about 10:00pm doing homework and rarely complain.  You wake up at 7:10am and come down in your p.j.'s,  plop down for breakfast and afterwards your woken up self is very cheerful.  Next you practice your piano, which you are doing right now as I type, and you generally get in close to 45 minutes of playing before we head out to school.  We leave at 8:30 to meet up with a carpool where we all take turns driving.  I like being the driver as I get to listen to you interacting with the others (2 girls) and catch a glimpse of what you are like in your school social life.

You have something going on after school every day except Tuesday, so again there are more carpools working in the afternoon.  I think my favorite day is picking you up early for cello on Wednesday.  I get to come in and check you out from school and you are always happy to see me!!   This means a lot to me as I have watched other friends of yours totally disregard their mothers or give them some serious attitude when they are there and I can see how it makes those moms feel hurt in some ways.  So thank you for always being kind to me regardless of where we are and who is watching!

You have a special place in your heart for all of your brothers and everyone of them in turn absolutely loves you.  If they each had to pick who they would get to buddy up with for an event or a sleepover or whatever, you would be the one.  You especially enjoy cuddling with Jonah and it's usually Gavin you get to stick it out with you for any sports play.

A few of your favorite things:

Music bands:  Rush, U2, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin (obviously Jared has influenced this on some level)

Favorite Books:  Dragon Rider, Enders Game, Lord of The Rings

Favorite Movies:  Inception, Napoleon Dynamite, Monte Python and the Holy Grail, Lord of the Rings.

Favorite foods: rice, pasta, tofu, rice, tortilla chips and salsa, Rice Krispies, Panang curry, rice, calamari, sausage, artichoke, rice, collards and kale.

Your all-time favorite pass-time is by far the Kendama.  You rarely leave the house without one strung around your neck and you continue to be the 7th grade champion in the DAMA-off's (like PIG or HORSE).  Most days you come home and show me a new trick that you "landed" that day either on purpose or by sheer accident.  You have started videoing yourself doing tricks and then using my macbook to make iMovies that you hope to post on youtube at some point.  I think you dream at night about actually getting "sponsored" by some of the various Kendama companies.  Apparently there is a Kendama USA team....who would have thought!

I love everything about you Caleb....every last little thing. And I am so thrilled that I get to be the mom who watches you become an amazing person.  Watch out world here comes Caleb Sims!

Snowbird March 8, 2013

Celebrating with an post-ski soak

A Photos Essay of Sorts

A few photos from the latest adventures:

A reminder of that Jared was going to be traveling in the next 24 hours :)

Mom and Dad Hill came up to Snowbird to have lunch with the boys.  Aren't they all cute!!  My Dad came up the day before to ski with the boys while Jared was involved in his conference and then had some meetings with BYU.

Liam tried hard to recreate for me the story he was telling grandma, but he couldn't quite remember it.  By the looks of things it was very funny!

After being at Snowbird for a couple of days they headed to Provo to spend the last two nights with G&G Harris.  The photos are random, but there wasn't a huge selection for some reason......an anomaly for my picture taking husband.  But I love this photo of these two love birds reading the comics together.  Jared has told me a few times of his memory of coming home from elementary school to find his mom sitting on the floor next to a window with the afternoon sun streaming in and seeing her reading the comics! Love that image and story of this great mother.

 

Caleb looking ever so thrilled that he was about to head to class with other deacons he didn't know after priesthood opening exercises with Grandpa Harris.  Turns out that he has a great time :).  Liam reported that after class introduction in his primary group, they broke out into snacks and play time.  But apparently Sharing Time was fantastic!

 Time to bring out the very,very old juicer.  This belonged to Jared's grandma, Floy before making a home with Brent and Emilie.  The boys reported that the juice was actually pretty good.  I buy it here, but they tend to turn their noses up at it.  Food always taste better when you have  hand in making it!

 Last day of skiing was at Alta, a new resort for the boys, and they loved, loved, loved it.  Apparently they spent the second half of the day on a black diamond run that was the best run they have ever experienced.  The name will come when one of them can remember it, but for now we'll call it the best run of all time!

Generator Time

Either that or we move to another house!  The wicked winter storm that came through last Wednesday took our power out for 4 days...four long and dark days.  It also took down trees one of which landed squarely on top of the van smashing the hood.  And why did it have to coincide with Jared leaving town with Caleb and Liam for a long awaited ski trip to Utah, oh, that would be because EVERY time Jared leaves town something crazy happens.  The list includes bee attacks, near bear attacks, plumbing leaking, plumbing leaking a second time....through the ceiling no less, kid crisis with blood that I've blocked out and now 4 days sans power and oh yeah, that smashed hood on the van (Jared was still here for that part as well as the first night with no power).  Now, for those of you city folk, you might be thinking to yourself that I should buck up and deal with a little lack of electricity.  I mean, I did have 12 inches of snow to bury my food in for 48  hours before it turned to 60 degrees again, I did have gas to cook my food with, and I did have a gas fireplace that kept the house at a cozy 64 degrees, but I did not have WATER.  We have a well, which gives us very tasty water, but with no power that luxury is sorely missed.  Actually, I'm thrilled with bottled water during crisis, so it's not taste I find most annoying......it's the blasted toilets and cleaning up of the dishes and anything else.  Do you know that it takes about 1.5 gallons of water to just fill each of my tanks and every time someone goes to the bathroom there needs to be a flush!  Because,  for the record, peeing is NOT allowed in the house during power outages except before bed and during the night!!  But I have a family of regular, multiple times a day poopers and even though it was just the three of us for most of the time, we went through a bathtub full of water and 15 gallons of stored water...just for toilet flushing.  I store cleaning water in old liquid laundry soap containers (1 gallon each) and I went through 4 of those, one each day.

To keep myself from going crazy from no water and Ruby hair all over the place, we did have some adventures.  I knew that the weather was going to hold for a few days before returning to 60 degrees, so I loaded up the ski gear and headed to Wintergreen for the best ski day we've ever had there.  The new snow made it possible for the entire mountain to be open and for the snow to be ever so lovely.  By the end of the day there was some slushy parts, but for the most part it was ice-free and dare I say a little powdery?  Jonah was awesome and went down a black diamond twice, then wanted to go on his own run while Gavin and I did it again.  So I agreed and we met him at the bottom of the hill where the two runs came together.  Of note, this is not Utah Black diamond....the runs take you about 3 minutes to get down regardless of which path you take.  He was so proud of himself for being able to exercise that bit of freedom that he did it two or three more times.  Gavin is not so adventurous in that way,  more of a worrier, so never wanted to take his own path and he stuck with me and we had a great time.

The next night we had great friend take pity on us and not only serve us a great dinner, but let us stay until 9:30 watching Avengers (I didn't mention that the storm meant school was cancelled for 3 days).  That was so nice to not have to be in the dark all evening.

The next day we woke to still no power, so I arranged to them to play at a friends while I went to the gym to exercise and get a needed shower.  They ended up spending about 5 hours there playing and having some "life-time favorite events" while I ran errands.   The dad took the boys (they have 2 boys and 3 girls) on a 6 mile bike ride and Gavin could not stop talking about it....to the point that I was having mothers guilt for not having taken him on a ride like that myself.....I mean, I'm a bike rider for crying out loud!  In his words, "it was the best bike ride in my whole life".  He then poured salt in the wound when he told me that he much preferred her quesadillas to mine because she doesn't used refried beans just cheese!  But come on, isn't this the kid that just made up a ditty on the piano about how he hates melted cheese!  I'm actually pretty thick skinned about stuff like this and was just happy that he had such a great day because being stuck at home with no power again was not  really ever going to be that fun!

That night I headed to Panera Bread because I didn't want to make a mess and I really had no food that sounded good at that point.  I was also hoping to charge my electronics so I could at least watch a movie on my Macbook when the boys went to bed.  So I got everyone situated with meals and all of our stuff (phone, DS games, and Macbook) charging, and wouldn't you know it, but the wi-fi was down from the storm!  Seriously.  Lame.  My mom called and we chatted for a few minutes and then headed home with no chance to catch up on anything, but a fresh battery to watch Inception.  I love that movie even though it makes me have weird dreams all night long :).

The next morning about 11:00  I was riding my road bike on the trainer when the boys came running in to excitedly announce that the power was back on!  Finally......we are back in business.  I immediately told them to go and flush every toilet in the house just in the event that the power went out again and this was just a false alarm.  It wasn't and I enjoyed a nice hot shower in my own bathroom!

Jared is flying home as I write and we are all very excited to see them and hear about their adventures.

Walk with Jonah

We had to rearrange piano this week which meant that today Liam and Gavin had lessons back to back for 1.5 hours.  Our piano teacher recently moved to a new house and being that I spend a great deal of time in her new neighborhood I find myself exploring while I wait.  A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a 3.2 mile cross country running path for the local high school.  So today being that I knew we'd have a big chunk of time, I loaded up Ruby (the dog) before picking up the kids from school, and asked Jonah how he felt about going on a "hike" with me while we waited.  He was thrilled.  Off we went along the path and I had no idea what to expect from him, but he was utterly delightful.  Running ahead, skipping, stopping to notice a piece of glass, a simple rock and all the while gabbing away.  He's much like Jared in this way.....never really at a loss for words and delighted with a new place to explore.  We talked about everything from a new friend we wants to invite over, what his animal pick is for an upcoming project, his desire to compete in a 4-H speech contest, and on and on.  After about 30 minutes I asked how he was feeling because I knew we had about another 30 minutes before we made it back the car.  "I'm great mom, I'm not even tired.  At all."

We continued on and crossed bridges where he balanced on the sides and contemplated aloud the what-if's of falling in the creek below, sat on a giant tree trunk that was cut to keep the path clear, and skipped rocks in the creek while Ruby barked like a maniac at the slightest anticipation of a throw.  Then something happened that made my heart swell.  He started thinking back to when he was in preschool and all the fun things we did together.  His favorite memory was when I would take him in the Burley bike trailer and ride up to Sugar Hollow.  We did this about once a week when the weather was tolerable in both Spring and Fall.  I would usually pack him and Ruby in the trailer with lunch in the back and we'd stop at the stream to eat, throw rocks in and just explore.  He remembered details that I had forgotten, or maybe never knew like the time Gavin was with us and opened a yogurt that exploded on the roof of the trailer.  That one made him laugh to himself while he was remembering the story.  He then became desperate to recreate the memory and talked for about 10 minutes about the weight restriction of the Burley and if I could pull the 100# of he and Gavin combined.  No, I cannot do that, but Dad could, so he announced his plans to the brothers when we picked them up:  this weekend Dad would pull him and Gavin in the Burley and the rest of us would ride along to once again throw rocks in the stream at Sugar Hollow.