chip, audrey, ruby, and owen: Alright 2016- Let's do this!

It has been a fantastic snow year! It actually feels like winter around here, which after a handful of really mild winters, is very welcome. Ruby and Owen are taking ski lessons at Deer Valley again. Their teacher is Will and he seems to do an awesome job with the kids. They are making great strides and are a lot of fun to ski with they aren't whining. We parents have to have a lot of foresight to know how much fun we are going to have once we are out on the hill. There is a lot of fussing and less than awesome behavior leading up to these smiles, which has to be dealt with, redirected, or at least tolerated. I pray daily that I am not reinforcing bad attitudes and choices (which I am sure I am) or creating them. I pray that I am raising grateful and open kids and not entitled and whiny ones. I also am trying to enjoy the days and manage myself too! Accomplishing all that on any given day seems like brain surgery. Hopefully it all comes out all right. ;)

Putting together some of our gifts from birthday and Christmas. We have enough projects to last us through the year, which is great because that is the nature of our gift dispersement in the family. Mom has to be good at rationing out all the fun things we get throughout the year. This one was fun! Legos still take a lot of help to follow the directions, but, when given the time to do it with them, it is really fun for me too.

So, since I am the executrix of my dad's estate, I get to have this all arrive at my house now. This is one day's mail. Some of it is junk, but not much at this point. It is lots of things to follow up on and take care of. With a TON of help from my mom, we are getting through it and will figure it all out. For now, it tips we over into overwhelmed most days. This too will pass.

I don't think I posted a picture of the goals Ruby and Owen set for themselves for 2016. I LOVE these. I did not prompt them on any of these, just on the idea of goals and asked them what they might want to work on this year. We'll see what we can do!

Ruby and Owen have been craving more responsibility. They will clear the table, feed the dog (every day for Owen), wipe the bathroom down, as well as their established chores of putting their clean clothes away and picking up toys. One night they wanted to wash the dishes. Pretty cute.

Speaking of cute. This was a "practice" night for when Finn and Nola came to visit. They were going to share a bed so Finn and Nola could share the other one of theirs. It went well! We are ready for y'all!

And here they are! Colorado DuRoss' came into town just in time for a leak in our roof to spring. Chip was grateful for the extra hand removing snow up there and figuring it all out. The rest of us went for a sled run. Good times!

We also had a pizza party with all the usual crowd. These kids are all getting so big and grown up!

January 17th was my dad's birthday and we wanted to celebrate with some skiing in his honor. Chip was working so we decided to cross country instead of downhill and try out our new camel back backpacks from Nana and Papa. They were a hit and worked great. Looking forward to getting a lot of use out of these this summer.

And finally, in January, I got away for a weekend of backcountry skiing and time with the girls at a hut in Logan Canyon. We stayed at the Bunchgrass Hut for a few night and skied for three days. It was LOVELY. Will do this again. I adore these gals, their smiles, their spirits, and all the laughs, exercise and time we got together.

Low angel love affair baby! The snow was PERFECT- fresh and not too deep to be dangerous. The terrain was giggly and fun and again, not too steep to be too dangerous so fun factor was high. Yahoo!