It's a bird! It's a plane! It's.....

A asked me to go on the latest JROTC (Jr. ROTC) ski trip with him this past weekend. We went to church Saturday eve. and left early Sunday morning, leaving hubby home with the other kids. We ignorantly anticipated weather mirroring the last trip, and ended up sorely ill prepared. The younger boys had misplaced one of A's good ski gloves, so we grabbed another pair as we ran out the door and thought we'd be fine. The weather started getting uglier as the bus made its way up the mountain, but my latent Pollyanna tendency raised its head and tried to convince me that all the extra snow would make the skiing more fun. Pollyanna's an idiot. It wasn't snow being blown by gale-force winds, it was ice. Ice is hard. And cold. Did I mention that it's hard? Not as hard as cobblestones, but nothing you'd want being thrown at your face. By the time we made our way up to the lift-ticket booth I was done. My face felt raw. My new plan was to crawl to the lodge and spend the day reading and listening to hubby's iPod, but the JROTC Commander somehow managed to convince me that it wouldn't be so bad once we actually started skiing. The Arctic ice-blast was blowing from the top of the mountain down, so, in theory, if we were also going down the mountain it wouldn't be bad at all. Not all theories hold up under experimentation, and this one completely collapsed. This was no ordinary Arctic ice-blast. This one was possessed by Satan himself and managed to blow right at us regardless of our direction. It's not easy to ride a T-bar while covering your face with both hands. Although, had we included goggles and neck socks or face masks in our ski wear we might not have picked up that helpful little tidbit, so it all works out. Pollyanna once again raised her deceptive head and pointed out that there's always a bright-side. Maybe having ice gravel blasted into my face would be like a natural microdermabrasion treatment. Pollyanna lies. There was no bright -side. No youthful, dewy glow for me! No, sir. By lunch time I looked like I'd had gravel thrown at my face for hours.

After lunch Major (the Commander) decided A and I had progressed enough to go to the chair lift and make our way down a couple of blue hills. The blue runs were more protected from the flying ice so we were actually able to focus on improving our technique rather than making sure we weren't blown into the oncoming T-bar. Major and his wife are great teachers and A and I made it down the blue slopes without dying, which on first glance I wasn't so sure we'd accomplish. But we pulled it off with only one mishap while disembarking the chair, which resulted in my skis and legs wrapping around me in an unnatural and extremely painful position. Forget standing gracefully when your feet are twisted up around your head with 5-foot sticks attached to them. It wasn't pretty.

The highlight of the day, however, happened on our final descent. Major took-off after telling us he knew another way down. Being obedient little cadets we followed him and suddenly found ourselves heading off the slope onto the untouched powder of the treeline. "A" thought it was awesome and his exuberance led to a burst of pure teenage wisdom that sent him off in a different direction than Major in an attempt to "beat him to the bottom". I was pulling up the rear and desperately trying not to lose control as I straddled small fir trees and brush. Before I knew what had happened I found myself face-first in a cloud of powder with my feet around my ears again. I learned something else, though. Avoid having to put your skis back on on virgin powder. It's hard to push back into the bindings without anything of substance under the skis. When I'd stopped laughing and picked myself back up I noticed "A" way off one direction while Major was way off in the opposite direction. "A" was slowly trying to maneuver his way back through the scrub and trees and was having a hard time of it, but laughing at his own stupidity in thinking he could randomly take-off and guess at which direction Major was heading and beat him. He passed me to try to catch up with Major, (testosterone at work, once again!) and as I came around a bend I heard him shout as I watched him fly off an embankment, land for a split second, then splat face-first and skid to a stop. His skis popped off and landed next to him, missing his head, thank goodness, which is obviously not always working at full-capacity anyway. I laughed so hard I cried. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life! I stood there holding my sides and wiping my eyes as "A" laughed and shouted about how "totally cool" it had been. It was the perfect ending to our trip!

My tired, old body needs to be better conditioned for this type of activity. The muscle spasms in my back aren't as bad today, but I'm definitely still stiff. "A" and I may be going on the JROTC overnight hiking/ski trip next month and I certainly can't be moaning and groaning around a bunch of teenagers. How "uncool" would that be! Because of the bad gloves he had to wear "A" ended up with cold weather injuries to his hands; mostly his fingertips. We got him warmed up just shy of frostbite, so he had the subcutaneous blisters without the skin discoloration. Only his fingernails hurt today and his grip is still weaker than it should be, but he's on the mend. Unfortunately, he'll probably always suffer from hand/finger pain in cold weather now; but Pollyanna tells me this was an important, albeit painful, lesson for him to learn about knowing his own limits and being humble enough to risk looking like a wimp and quit when he needs to. (She'd better not be lying to me again.)

Zoom, zoom...

"Schmabbers, can I sleep with you?" "Sure, Banana. Come on up!" Aren't sisters great?

This month has flown by! With hubby away at school until last weekend and juggling school and extras without him, blogging was at the bottom of my priority list. Above trimming my toenails, but way below forcing time for a daily shower. In order to conserve energy our water heater is timed and usually only functions for a couple of hours at a time each day. If we don't jump in before 0700 (Yeah...right! I'm going to get up, have quiet time, work out, make breakfast, AND take a shower by 0700!) we're often out of luck until close to dinner time (another really convenient time for a stay-at-home mom to wash the daily grime from her tired, squishy body!) or after 1900 (7:00 pm for you civilians). Sigh... But hubby's home again so we're back into our normal groove while we wait to hear when he'll have to fly Stateside for the final 7 weeks of this course. Hopefully sooner than later, so it won't interfere with our vacation plans. Oregon coast here we come!!!

School's going well. A and K are a few weeks behind in biology because the pond water required for several experiments is locked under inches of ice. Who knows how many microbes survive months of winter ice anyway; so we wait for the spring thaws. They're going to jump ahead to disecting the poor stinky creatures that have inhabited the dark recesses of our storage cubby and catch up on the pond water later. The kids have all voted for doing school year-round rather than take 3 months off in the summer, so it'll all work out. ("Summer's too long, Mom." "It gets boring after a couple of weeks.") We're shooting for 9 weeks on, 2 weeks off, but will keep it flexible to fit with travel plans and company.

Our big excitement lately is an upcoming trip to Rome! We leave on the 8th for a 5 day trip with others from our parish (congregation). We have aschedule full of sight-seeing and eating "real" pizza and have been invited to have tea with one of the Cardinals in his private apartment! The kids are going nuts with excitement, and we're just hoping nobody drops a cup or breaks something.
"I'm so sorry about your grandmother's cup, Your Eminance! If you have some seltzer water I'm sure I can get that stain up!"
"M! Get your feet off the coffee table! And J, do NOT lean over the balcony railing!"
"It's not a dress, girls. It's a ROBE."
"Boys! 5 sugar cubes is more than enough!!"
"What's that, Your Eminance? Yes, children ARE such a blessing, aren't they? More?? Why, we'd just love to have as many more as the Lord sees fit to give us."

(Note to self: Practice sincere tone of voice.)

Three teenagers!! EEEEKKKK!!

It's official! We've entered the crazy zone. On Sunday (Epiphany) M turned 13. How does this happen? How do our kids get so old when we don't feel any older? O.K., that's a slight glossing over of the obvious signs of our aging, but we certainly don't feel old enough to have 3 teenagers! We've always lumped M in with the younger kids, as in "We have two teenagers and 4 younger kids". Guess we won't be doing that anymore! He's such a sweet boy and we're so blessed that he's part of our family. I'd been hired to make a cake for a promotion reception on post and it took me hours longer than it should have because my head hurt and I couldn't bend my neck. M decided he'd rather open gifts on Sunday and wait for his birthday dinner and cake on Monday so I could focus on the promotion cake first. That cake turned out really well (pics below)and was picked up Sunday evening, then Monday I put together M's chocolate mint ice cream cake. Yum! We enjoyed his favorite meal of Stackee-up, then ate cake and played Apples to Apples. It was a great day!

More snow pics

Snow fun!!

We had so much fun last weekend! A's JROTC instructor is really involved with his group and plans lots of outdoor activities for the kids. They sponsor several ski trips each winter and welcome the families to join their students, so we took advantage and tagged along on Saturday. I hadn't been skiing since before we were married (19 years ago!!!) and had only skied a couple of times before that, so J and I took a beginner's class together. Both the JROTC leader and his wife teach the beginner's class and are fantastic instructors. It "clicked" for me this time, which it hadn't ever done before. Skiing had always consisted of me squeezing my knees together and splaying my feet in a desperate attempt to hold an ackward wedge as I careened down the slope. Skiing was always both a slightly spiritual and terrifying experience. Spiritual in that I consistently witnessed the hand of God miraculously move other skiers out of my Kamakaze path. Terrifying because I felt as out of control as I looked. This time was different; it was fun! This was A's second time and he's caught on really quickly. He'd much rather be snowboarding, but he's learning to enjoy skiing, too. J was a trooper! K tried to learn how to ski but wimped out and spent the afternoon sipping $5 hot chocolate in the lodge. (Big baby!) J pushed himself through lots of frustration without much progress and ended up deciding he wants to keep learning. He managed to successfully take down 2 hapless Germans before having the tables turned and being knocked down by another little girl. One of their skis (the jury is still out on who's) popped up and whacked him in the mouth chipping his front tooth. Hopefully it won't take too long to get him a dental appt. Matt spent the day alternately sledding with the kids and forking over wads of cash for overpriced cocoa and french fries. The younger kids passed out on the bus trip home which gave me some quiet time to read.
Our area was hit with a freak frozen rain storm while we were skiing so we arrived to a world coated with 1/4" of solid ice. Talk about a slow drive home! Our driveway is up a narrow little dead end road that's shared with three other homes. The only way to fit our cars in the driveway is to drive up the end driveway (on an incline) and back up while turning sharply into ours. My hope was that if I had enough momentum going up the driveway I'd be able to slooooowly back into our spot with room left for Matt to park when he got home. I must not have spoken my wishes out loud, because the car clearly didn't understand my expectations and had a plan all it's own. I was barely able to get the wheels to turn, just enough to be angled right at the front bumper of our waiting van, and there I sat. The ice was so thick I couldn't go forward to straighten it out, and continuing backward would have plowed us into our van. I climbed out and slid across the driveway hoping I could find something to throw under the wheels for traction when I heard the ice crunching again and looked up just in time to see the car sliding sideways into the van. Banana was still buckled in the backseat so I hurried to get her (note to self: do NOT try to run on ice again, Dummy!) and instead discovered that German cobblestones have lasted for centuries because they're really hard. And unforgiving to human heads. K came up with the brilliant plan to dig up loose dirt from around the shrubs out front and throw it on the ice. (She gets her brains from me!) It worked like a charm so we completely covered the driveway and road before Matt came home. So, if you don't have salt to deice with try dirt! This is the first day I haven't sported a headache and I can finally turn my neck again, so the self-inflicted mild whiplash is losing it's grip. Maybe I need to buy some golf shoes for winter walking over here...

The new Miss K!

Drumroll, please!

My friend Julie and I had a lot of fun cutting and playing with K's hair tonight. It ended up a little shorter than I'd planned (Oooops!), but she looks so cute! She really likes it, too, which makes me feel better about taking so much off. I've never known anyone with hair as thick as hers! We cut off half a pound of hair!! (Yes, we weighed it. What can I say..we're dorks!) Dad says he thinks the cut is great, but it makes her look too old. He'd like to keep her in pigtails so he can pretend she isn't growing up. Enough rambling...

Oh, well....

While making smoothies and soft pretzels for breakfast this morning my ears were suddenly filled with the sounds of our comical 5 yo singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs. I quietly stepped closer to the curtained pantry (her oft times secret stage) to fulfill my need for affirmation that at least one of our children is in possession of the Bean musical genes. The tune was clearly recognizable, but the words...... "Oooooh, welllll.....Oooooh, welllll....Ooooooh, wellll....Oh, well! God is the Kiiiiing of Iiiisrael!" After a swallowed snicker and a big smooch I gently explained to her that the words of the beautiful carol she was lyrically butchering were "Noel! Noel! BORN is the King..." to which she looked at me and shrugged as if to say, "Oh, well..."