Uncategorized – Page 3

Grandma Celeste Visits

March 16, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

In March, Grandma Celeste flew out from Utah to come visit for a week. Grandma Celeste always has the most fascinating stories about growing up in a log cabin in the wilderness of Alaska, and entertained the girls with tales of her adventures as a young girl– making friends with Eskimos, encountering bears, exploring the woods, you name it! She’s written a few fiction and non-fiction books about her life and that of her parents, so she had lots of material to draw from for her story-telling! I don’t know how many times I can downstairs to find the girls sitting at the table listening to a Grandma Celeste story!

We had a very warm week while she was here and made it to the beach a few times.

Floating on logs in the creek… don’t want to know what’s in there.

Cooling off in the pool.

Enjoying a soak in the hot tub after a long day of running around.

The girls thought it would be funny to dogpile on grandma and wake her up. Welcome to our world.

Grandma Celeste accompanied us to the twins’ softball game on Saturday morning. Meredith occupied herself with trying to catch Eleanor and apply sunscreen to her entire body.

Grandma Celeste loves to paint, especially in watercolors, and brought some of her supplies along. She set up her canvas and painted on the beach and spent hours painting with the girls at home. She painted them some still lifes of some pretty lilies we had in our house:

She helped the girls paint some water colors of their own and they had a blast since they LOVE art.

After hearing all of the Alaska stories from Grandma, Amelia and Samantha chose Alaska for their state research project at school.

And since the girls all love flowers so much, we took a day trip to see the millions of ranunculus flowers at the Carlsbad Flower Fields.

After taking a wagon ride through the flowers and playing on the fairy playground, the girls did a scavenger hunt.

Thanks for coming, Grandma Celeste!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alaska, aliso creek beach, carlsbad flower fields, Grandma Celeste, March 2019, painting, watercolors

Meredith’s First Time Skiing

March 3, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

The kids’ favorite part of our Utah trip was going skiing. No surprises there since the twins loved it last year and had been begging to go back. Months prior, I had asked the twins what they wanted to do for their 6th birthday and they both chose skiing instead of having a big birthday party with friends! Even though Meredith had just turned 3 and wasn’t old enough for the group lessons, we decided to bring her along and have her try it. Of course, she took to it like a duck on water and loved it. Eleanor had a nice Grammy-baby date at home while the rest of us skied for a few days.

Getting the gear on is always the hardest/most frustrating part for parents and the girls alike! The girls made snow angels while we were registering them for ski school.

While the girls were in ski school, I did a private lesson and Jake tagged along. Our instructor was a lady from Quebec and was a no-nonsense teacher! I finally learned to be more stable and not cling to Jake while getting off the chair lift (always the worst part), and learned how to turn much better so that I wasn’t completely terrified going down the hill. Jake learned a few techniques too, although by the end of the lesson, he was sick of going down the blue and greens with me and left me with the instructor while he went off to find a black diamond! In the afternoon, Jake went back out with the twins, while I hung out in the lodge.

We put Meredith in a 1 hour private lesson and I was shocked at how much she loved it! She was skiing in no time! After her lesson, she went to the kids club to play, had lunch with the other kids and even took a nap. I went to check in on her a few times and she mostly ignored me because she was busy chatting away with the other kids and teachers! After the first day, the ski school told us that even though she wasn’t technically old enough to be in a group lesson with the twins, she did so well her first lesson that they were going to let her try the group. But when we got there the next day, the head instructor told us there were a lot of kids in the ski school that day and she’d be better off doing another private lesson, so we did that again and she was happy!

It’s hard to say what Meredith loves more… skiing or softball?

This was Samantha and Amelia’s second year skiing and they picked up right where they left off last year, learning turns and at the end, finally graduating to the real ski lift on a the big runs.

The first day skiing it was freezing and started snowing pretty heavily during the afternoon. On the second day, we had the nicest blanket of snow on the ground which made for excellent skiing.

In the afternoon, while Meredith was in the kids club, the twins took turns going with Jake on the chair lift on their first big run. They did awesome! I’m always surprised at how little fear they have– they are definitely already better skiers than me.

Amelia ready to take on the hill.

Here we go!

Perfect skiing conditions!

Sammy the speed demon. She kept asking Jake how she could go faster.

So exhausted! Our legs felt like jelly by the end of the day.

Meredith enjoyed her post-skiing snacks.

We’ll be back next year!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alta, meredith's first time skiing, ski school, skiing, twins' first chair lift, Utah

Eleanor’s First Sled Ride and Igloo Building in Utah

March 2, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

Utah trip continued…

The snowfall was the most they’ve had in March in a long time, so we totally lucked out while we were there!

We bundled Eleanor up in her baby bunting suit and took her on her first sled ride!

She was mesmerized by the snow and giggled the entire ride.

Meredith loved pretending to be a reindeer pulling her sister in the sleigh.

WHAT IS THIS WHITE STUFF EVERYWHERE?

She wasn’t crawling very well yet, so it was easy to park her in the snow!

UM… IS SOMEONE GOING TO COME GET ME?

All right, I’m cool chilling.

Swing ride in the snow.

After Eleanor went inside to warm up, the other girls stayed out with Jake and Uncle Mike for hours building an EPIC igloo.

They spent a lot of time getting the foundation right!

Snug in their very professional looking igloo.

Voila!

Pretty impressive!

All bundled up and very hot! It took forever to squeeze her out of this thing.

Other indoor fun… playing the piano with Grandpa.

Our family friend, Susan, brought over a birthday cake for the twins and we did an early birthday celebration! Red velvet cake was exactly what they had wanted and they were so excited to have cake then AND on their real birthday.

Happy early 6th birthday!

Making pancakes with Grammy in the morning.

Eleanor chowed down every meal, as usual.

Swinging on a non-snowy day.

Nothing beats hot chocolate after hours of playing in the snow.

Grammy and Jake also took the girls out to the Natural History museum in Salt Lake while they were there and the girls had a blast.

The girls are on a quest to color at every single place they visit.

Watch out for those velociraptors… and I don’t mean the dead ones.

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: eleanor in the snow, eleanor's first sled ride, Grammy's house, hot chocolate, igloo, natural history museum, sledding, snow, uncle mike, Utah, winter

Spring Snow Fun in Utah

March 1, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

At the end of February/beginning of March we took a road trip to Utah to ski and get all the wintery stuff out of our system since we don’t experience a real winter where we live. We felt like we had traveled back in time going from sunny weather at our house to cold winter at Grammy’s! We did an overnight in Vegas this trip to break it up and left early the next morning to get to Utah as early as possible. Eleanor hated being in her car seat, but other than that, the trip was manageable. Meredith and the twins were occupied with coloring and movies the entire trip, so as soon as Eleanor gets to that point, we’ll be golden. It’s going to be a long couple of years though…

First winter sports activity to check off: ice skating! Good times at the Peaks Arena in Provo.

The skating stabilizers were a huge help with three kids who couldn’t skate very well!

move

Meanwhile, Eleanor enjoyed her vacation in the warmth of the house playing with toys.

While the weather was cold, there wasn’t any snow on the ground until the last two days of our vacation. We woke up to beautiful snow covering the ground! We were the only ones at the park that morning sledding and building snowmen… since it was March, I’m sure all the locals were sick of the snow by then! But to us it was so novel and the kids played for hours. They couldn’t get enough!

Hauling snow for their snow princesses.