Finally, our kids turned normal and were anxious about Christmas morning and looking forward to opening gifts. In the past, it's taken us a few days to plow through everything! We had everything done by noon this year, a record for us. Still, gift-opening didn't start until everyone was dressed, had breakfast, and everyone was in the room and ready.
Uncle Ronan always comes through with things little boys really want -- and what could they want more than remote-controlled cars?
Unless of course, it's lightsabers from Uncle Ryan and Aunt Laura! Close call -- they spent all day playing with RC cars or lightsabers.
Mom & Dad always get them these boring kit sorts of toys, which they end up loving, but don't have the same "wow factor" on Christmas Day.
I'm skimming here, because everyone got way more wonderful things they were very excited about. What's mentioned here is just what I happened to get pictures of.
Katrina loved this Clifford, hugging it again and again.
Grandparents obviously know her, because this Clifford activity kit was also a huge hit.
A Barbie! Her first -- it takes an Uncle to get things like this! She loves it.
And a very cool book on shadows from Aunt Laura and Uncle Ryan. Where do they get these great ideas?!
Socks for all three! The boys weren't so excited about socks after getting RC cars, but I know they both will get into them later. Julian especially will think hard about his dinosaur socks.
And lots lots more that I didn't happen to get photos of. I'm overwhelmed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of our family...thank you all!
Later, we decorated gingerbread cookies. Well, sort of "we"....the boys were involved in other things, so I started off with just Katrina. She was so into it, so cooperative, so easy to give guidance, I was really surprised. It was never like this with the boys, they needed a whole lot more guidance to keep them from dumping a whole bottle of sprinkles on one cookie. Katrina had a very clear vision of what she wanted each cookie to look like, she'd work on it for a few minutes, then announce "it's done!"
She ended up decorating almost all the gingerbread people I had left to decorate (I baked them yesterday). She chatted happily while she was working, describing each person and what they liked and what they were wearing, occasionally asking me for more decorations in a certain color in a certain shape. She was really really adorable and charming through all this.
I hate to say it, but for this sort of thing, girls (at least this one) really are more fun than boys (at least those ones)!
Gabriel joined in at the end, when there was only one left to decorate. He was easy to work with too, but then, he's almost 9. Meantime, Julian was happily working on a rocket project (from grandparents again) with Dad. I can't imagine decorating cookies with the boys together these days. They're constantly competing, insulting each other, and at each other's throats, and would probably start throwing sprinkle bottles at each other or start a gingerbread-man fight.
Christmas dinner was overall pretty simple. I attemped to duplicate Ryan's smash hit of brussel sprout fricasee from Thanksgiving, with perhaps 90% success (there's no replacing raw talent!). Add to that roast chicken, ciabatta/pancetta/chestnut stuffing, and broccoli for the kids who won't try brussel sprouts.
Katrina took one look at dinner and said, "May I please be excused?" I reminded her that gingerbread cookies were at stake, and she looked right at me without blinking and repeated, "May I please be excused?" Just like her older older brother, absolutely unrattled, single-minded, she knew exactly what she wanted to do. A quality I admire, but I still wish my 4-year-old would eat something for dinner. She put her plate away and marched straight upstairs to play.
Well, she met my criteria for dinner rules, and on principle I avoid food fights, so I let it go, but still, argh.
It rained all day and we went nowhere -- just how Christmas should be!
I have this week off from work, so I figured this was a fine time to make a "quick" trip to the snow. We have a real ski trip planned for January, but maybe I could pull off a "quick" "simple" overnight trip to go sledding.
First, get everyone's stuff together. Who fits what, who needs what, buy it, find it, borrow it, hand it down. I thought I was very clever putting each person's snow gear into one of these Ziploc "Flexible Tote" bags. They're ventilated, so would also work as temporary totes for wet snow stuff.
Great idea, except for one thing. My little brain sees a closed bag as "complete." Unfortunately, it turned out that a closed bag meant "I needed to move this to a different part of the room without everything falling out." More on that later.
We left around 11am, a perfectly poor time, since we'd arrive too late to do much. But I didn't feel like driving in the dark and snow in an unfamiliar place, and it's been stormy the past few days.
We've never had much trouble with kids in car trips anyway, and that's without food, DVDs or video games. Gabriel read "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" to Katrina for well over an hour.
We stopped at a Denny's, the boys' favorite, for a late lunch. What a pain. Katrina was awful, refused to order anything, and complained constantly. When the boys got their chocolate milkshakes, she fussed and cried and said she wanted that too, and finally agreed to eat a few bites of pancake to get one. The shakes take forever and we were ready to leave, but Gabriel sweetly shared his.
When we got up high enough in elevation to see snow, the kids were really excited. No one moreso than Katrina, she couldn't stop talking about it!
Gabriel paused his reading aloud at one point when we came around a bend and saw a valley lined with snow-tipped trees. "Wow, I love that big open view," he said, "If we were in a movie, this would be a perfect time for music!"
Destination: the very very basic Sierra Inn in Kyburz, that has a very very non-basic view of the American River. It's about 12 miles from the ski resort.
When we arrived, the kids immediately suited up to go play in the snow. And this is when the rotten eggs were discovered in my best-laid plans.
Somehow, one of Katrina's snow boots had been left behind. I think I'd taken it out of her bag to check its size, but it never made its way back in. This was a disaster -- our whole trip was planned around playing in snow, and boots is one of the few non-negotiably necessary items.
She was soooo excited to go play in the snow, I didn't have the heart not to let her, so she played in her lightweight vented sneakers, the only shoes she had on this trip. I had to come up with Plan B for her boots anyway.
They all played outside for over 2 hours, until I had to drag them in. (Unfortunately getting the boys to change states is really hard, and I had to get seriously mad at them to get them inside.)
By now, it was well past dark, and much of their gear was really wet. Not surprisingly, Katrina's feet were soaked through.
This wasn't the only problem. The boys' base-layer bottoms were still at home on my "to be sewn" shelf (to take in waistbands), both boys had forgotten pajamas, and Julian's hood and hat hadn't made it into his totes either. And somehow Katrina's hair-stuff bag didn't make it either. And I'd failed to try on my own borrowed snow pants and jacket.
Julian's jacket was already a last-legs item. It's a size 4 hand-me-down from his older cousin, it's too small for him, and the outer zipper doesn't work. The inner zipper worked, so it would do for the day, but I'd forgotten how unwaterproof it is. It was wet all the way through, including the sleeves.
These issues were all workable, but the missing boot wasn't.
Between rain, dark, tired, only soaked-through shoes for Katrina, no one wanting to change again, and the nearest restaurant turning out to be lunch/breakfast only, I improvised dinner with some just-in-case breakfast provisions I'd brought (oatmeal) while the kids watched an HBO Family movie. From now on: accommodations with a kitchen.
Meantime, I tried to dry the soaked clothes, taking care not to melt anything on Katrina's sneakers.
In the morning, we packed up and drove to the Strawberry Lodge for breakfast, starting with and some hot chocolate.
Katrina repeated and escalated her "performance" from Denny's yesterday. She refused to order anything, then when I ordered French Toast for her, she was outraged that it wasn't Julian's smiley-face pancake. She whined and complained about absolutely everything ("I don't LIKE milk! I don't LIKE snow!"), then forced me to carry her away from a fireplace where she sat down in the way of other patrons. I was furious that my life had regressed back to bouncing fussy toddlers around in restaurants while waiting anxiously for food to arrive. I'm so done with that. Worse, she was keeping me from chatting excitedly with the boys about the upcoming snow play.
She was also obstinate about going to the bathroom. I absolutely did not want to arrive at the ski resort with her needing to go. Parking and getting everyone's gear on and figuring out where to go would be made 10 times more stressful by a pee emergency. I fought and struggled with her, stayed silent sometimes, got angry and threatened to take her home other times, or just left her alone in the bathroom when I was getting too frustrated. Finally she relaxed and produced and we were on our way.
This restaurant nightmare was one of the very few times I've ever thought "this child needs a spanking" of her.
Another 10-minute drive, and here we were at Sierra-at-Tahoe!
This is the ski resort we're going to in January, which also has a tubing/sledding area. It's so confusing figuring out new ski places; so I figured we might as well do the sledding here and get the lay of the land.
Indeed, it was a real pain figuring out which lot to park in, but when we did, we joined the leagues of snowboarders (mostly boarders! boo!) gearing up in the parking lot. The boys put their snow bibs on over their jeans -- not ideal but it's all they had, since their base layer bottoms and a reasonable substitute in a pinch (PJs) were all at home. Gotta make do.
That's when I discovered that the wall furnace "dryer" had melted the one functioning zipper on Julian's jacket. I froze in disbelief and panic. Is this possible?!
Further inspection showed several inches of zipper teeth melted into one long slippery tab. There was no zipping this jacket today. Like boots, jacket zippers are another non-negotiable item.
After the blood started circulating again and my limbs unlocked, I actually laughed. I'm being tested, I'm sure of it! Fortunately, the jacket also has snaps, and those would have to do for the day. Some serious improvising going on here.
Finally geared up, I then thought to ask if we were in the right place for the tubing. And no we weren't, it's in a different lot on the other fork of the Y.
Pile everyone back into the car, and find the tubing area, where I discovered there is no lodge. The tubing is in a separate area from where the rentals, ski school, restaurants and retail shop are. There were porta-potties, but no indoors and no place to buy lunch. Once again, we'd have to make do.
But now we needed to go back to find the rentals. I'd had a brainstorm in the middle of the night as I lay awake fretting about the Katrina boot problem: rent snowboard boots. Snowboard boots are light enough to walk in, and the ski school would certainly have her size for rent. Finding regular boots to buy in her size without driving into South Lake Tahoe would be impossible.
And this improvisation worked. It cost us 45 minutes and $17.50, but at least Katrina could play in the snow now. And now I knew where the adult snowboard rentals were (which didn't have the small sizes) and where the ski school was (which did), where the retail shop is, where to buy water, where the ATM machines were, where the bathrooms were, and where the guest services were (which isn't where the rentals are). This was much more information than I'd planned to obtain this morning, but I had it now.
Finally done, we drove back to the tubing area. I signed a zillion waiver forms, paid $10 each, and then let the kids loose. After all the morning's hassle, they were all very ready!
The tubing lift was down for maintenance, but the tubing runs were open, and there's a walk-up lane in which you pull your own tube up. The tubing was much more supported than I expected -- they have guys at the top to push you (I think to prevent people from swan-diving onto the tubes), and guys at the bottom to help stop you and to clear out the landing area. Thank you lawyers!
We arrived early enough (11am) to get the one coveted "double-tube." The boys could tube themselves, but Katrina either had to go in my lap, or in this double-tube.
She wasn't sure about the whole thing at first, and started to throw a tantrum about having to sit in the tube like this. Feet out is the rule.
But as soon as we got going, she lit right up and laughed aloud most of the way. She loved it! This photo and video are from her first time -- no need to get used to it for once.
We did this many times, all but one successful. Something set her off and she punished me by refusing to look.
The boys needed no prompting. Julian's tube kept slowing down and getting stuck despite valiant pushes from the guys helping; this problem went away when we had to start rotating tubes.
Gabriel was all over it, and went down again and again and again. He practically sprinted back up with his tube; I think he went down twice for every one run of Julian's.
I also went down once or twice with each kid sitting in front of me. Gabriel certainly doesn't need his mommy with him , but I'm so glad that he still wants to.
Me and Julian.
And Katrina.
What's with the bear in the background? This guy showed up after we'd been there for about an hour. Katrina was put off: "It's not Halloween!!" The bear reached out to her, and she recoiled and gave the usual shriek of terror that she reserves for dogs.
But she was very interested in the bear, and later I was able to get a photo of her with him.
Then she started following him around everywhere. One time I lost track of her and then found her walking up to the top of the tubing in pursuit of the bear! It was very cute, actually. (Pink is a great color to spot a little kid in the snow from a distance!)
The boys eventually tired of pulling tubes up, and turned their attention to whacking each other with snow, and playing on this hill. Gabriel engineered a set of snow steps, as the hill got slick after some time to climb up.
Katrina, never a good climber, went up and slid down again and again and again.
They did take a break for some granola bars (aka "lunch") and then went right back to playing. The temperature was about 30-31 degrees, warm enough that you could sit down for a short while and eat. It was snowing on and off the whole time we were there, but never snowed hard.
Later the boys found the bear, and had a great snowball fight with him and one or two of the other guys running the tubing hill. Julian especially made friends with these guys. It occurred to me that they're really not much older than the boys; maybe 10-15 years. That's a lot closer in age to them than it is to me!
After another major struggle with a port-a-potty visit (that was resolved only with a promise/threat of hot chocolate), and a lot of prying to get the boys refocused from pummeling the bear with snowballs, I managed to get everyone piled into the car, wet snow gear and all. We'd change our clothes somewhere else...somewhere.
I took a short detour to investigate our accommodations for January. I was relieved to see how close the road and house is to the resort.
The carful of wet overdressed kids could survive for an hour. I figured we should drive to a large enough town to get gas, dinner, and change. It'd be warmer too, at a lower elevation.
No Denny's in Placerville though, so the boys settled for Carrows. No shakes at Carrow's, so they settled for a dessert sundae. And no cajoling them to eat -- they were very hungry and sat quietly plowing through their dinner!
Katrina was still on edge but finally was hungry enough not to be impossible. She ate a bowlful of spaghetti, but refused to eat any broccoli (which she likes), because there were other vegetables on the plate too. She finally conceded when she saw the dessert sundae that was at stake.
And then she won her own. This overall was still an irritating struggle, but it paled next to Denny's. Our waitress was visibly shocked when I told her that this was the best-behaved Katrina's been at a restaurant on this trip.
We were home by 8pm, tired, but happy!
I sure learned a lot on this trip. The gear snafus piled on one after another -- thank goodness I hit the biggest snags before our real trip in January. We won't have time to recover from missing items, since the kids will have ski school first thing in the morning.
Though many people drive up and back in the same day, for us it's a big enough trip that it's worth staying at least 2 nights. Driving home after the snow play mostly works, aside from the wet-gear problem.
I hated the restaurant dependency, and Katrina made that 100 times worse. For many meals, there's no need for an hour-long restaurant visit, and in some cases, like their oatmeal dinner, it isn't an option anyway. Next time: accommodations with even a very basic kitchen.
But, logistical tests and all, it really was worth it. I really love seeing how happy the kids are in snow. I've never seen Katrina more animated or excited. And I just love being in the mountains, seeing the trees and valleys and views. I can't wait to go skiing now!
12/21-12/22/2010
Notes: what's needed to buy/replace/find/fix for January trip: - Boys: base layer pants (fix waistband) - Boys: different ski/snow socks that aren't so itchy - Boys: light fleece shirts instead of cotton sweatshirts - Gabriel: mittens he can put on more easily with wet hands - Julian: new jacket - Katrina: long base layer pants that stay in boot - Me: ski socks (borrowed ones are too big) - Me: bigger gloves (borrowed ones are size M and much easier to put on than mine) - DaVE: everything except gloves
I won't do a full blog post about our trip now -- I'm TIRED! We were gone less than 32 hours and still it seemed like a major adventure. Much adventure has to do with unexpected logistical issues, and once again, we was dogged by these. But like our first snow trip this year, in the end, the memory of the short fun part far outweighed the irritations.
The highlight was "tubing" -- glorified, purpose-built innertubes, and a bunch of young dudes working for the resort to help sort out who gets the tubes, pushing you to get started, and making sure you stop at the end.
I was really glad for the young-dude support, not just for the tubing, but because it meant the boys could tube completely on their own. Julian especially made lots of friends with them, partly because he tended to get stuck, they'd rescue him and then suggest a tube that slid better. They helped him put his goggles back on, had snowball fights with him, and listened to his exaggerated stories. It occurred to me that these young men are much closer in age to Julian than they are to me -- they're maybe 10 years older than he is, but 30 years younger than I am.
But no one had more fun tubing than Katrina! She shrieked in joy! I thought she'd be terrified, but she was ALL over it. "Mommy Mommy that was SO MUCH FUN!! Let's do it AGAIN!!" I rarely see her as animated and joyous as when she's in snow.
Good outweighed bad, but I won't forget the irritations lest they be repeated -- I've got to run out of bad-logistic-karma soon! More on that later.
I'm off work this week while Dave is working. Next week, switcheroo: I'll work while Dave stays home with the kids. This is "vacation" around here!
Busy day....early dentist appointments for all three, then some time at home without touching ANYTHING because the cleaners were coming. Then to the gym, then lunch, then some errands (with middling success; I had to storm the boys out of REI and stick them on benches outside, mercifully out of sight of each other). When home, we did something very unusual, but it was a rainy day and I was super-tired: watched part of a movie (Princess Bride).
By now I'd decided that we will try to go sledding tomorrow! The boys started making lists of things to pack, which took 10 times longer than actually packing -- I'm only planning one overnight, and our snow stuff is already organized (!yay!) if not entirely complete. Complete enough for a few hours of sledding though.
If we pull it off. Storms are still storming here -- I even heard about the California storms on the BBC World News! But our plan is to leave in the morning. "Plan" is the keyword here -- we'll see!
Usually rain here means snow in the mountains, so I've been extra-motivated to get the kids' snow stuff together. This includes a list of what everyone needs, what each individual is missing, and a brief description of what they have if they do.
I took the boys shopping yesterday, first to Any Mountain, then to Pottery Barn Kids -- just sneaking some new very-overdue storage. At Any Mountain, we found a few things, such as bibs on sale for both boys, but jackets were impossible. Boy boys fall into a size never-never land: too big for toddler stuff, but too small to find much in the Boys' section.
Mostly, all 3 were absorbed in setting up the train around the Christmas tree this weekend. They spent hours playing with it, after Gabriel set it up. Naturally it's been the source of almost as much conflict as fun.
Today was more snow-stuff shopping. This shouldn't be so hard! I did OK at REI, but still needed things like a base layer for Julian and a less-expensive longer-lasting jacket for Gabriel. (I found one at REI but it's a size 6 and it's OK on him now but probably won't be next year, and for $115, it better make it until next year.) So I took them all to Sports Basement today, where we found most of the essentials.
I also went furniture-shopping this morning -- my, our credit card is taking a beating! It's TIME to make decisions and plan the family room and put real furniture in there. Finally, I drew a line in the sand. It'll take 10-12 weeks for a new couch and chair to arrive.
When I got home, I saw an odd sight: kids playing out front. That doesn't happen often in these suburbs.
I'm still having a hard time imagining how we'd leave for a sledding trip tomorrow -- some things still are missing (nothing essential but it'd be nice to have snow-purpose shirts for the boys and a base layer that fits Julian), and what we have still needs to be all tried on together. It wasn't like this last year because didn't get everyone to try everything on, and was caught by surprise by a lot of things (not to mention a lot of time unpackaging everything and taking tags off). This year, every kid will get their own bag with snow stuff that (mostly) fits, works together, and that they can put on themselves.
I'm amazed how time-consuming this all is! And expensive! I have new appreciation and gratitude for the numerous generous hand-me-downs we've gotten for Katrina. Not only do those save us money, but also save a ton of hassle shopping. (That said, it'd probably be easier to snow-stuff-shop for Katrina. Snow-stuff-shopping is no different than most-everything-else-shopping: 10 times as much stuff available for girls as for boys.
Next week I get to try my hand at full-time Mom again, starting with 8:15am dentist appointments for the boys! Whee!!
