the podium

Although our mountain town keeps winter alive and well until late May, our ski season is coming to a close.

Our little men finished up their ski programs this weekend and our voices are a little hoarse from our cheers.

Rufus finished his program with the Cookie Race.  Notice the foil-wrapped cookie medal around his neck.  Coach Julia was awesome and really helped lay the foundation for his future in skiing.

 

Today The Hunter and Sauce had the final race with real times and medals within each age category.

The Hunter spent the day battling the barf and diarrhea bug, but mustered up the energy to get to his race and take third place in the eight year old category.

Coach Martin named his team of boys "Princesses" and worked these boys to the bone this season.

Sauce was visibly shocked to beat out every other boy in his age group to take first place.  Coach Justin sure sharpened his skills and their team had such a blast this year.

I did get to ski with my boys a few times this year.  Here we are on top of the world last weekend.

And, my world of men - my life and pure joy...

Just so you know, this is how it all starts.  Here's our little Squirt, giggling through his first experience on skis. 

I'm sure he's picturing the turns he will carve with his brothers someday.

ain't no stopping them

We desperately need snow to make this snow snob go up again.

My men approach thing differently.

With a smile...

 

sucker!

My beloved and I have been looking forward to this ski season, not for the snow, fresh air, or vertical feet.

We have THREE boys in a locals' ski program this year.

TEN Saturdays.

NINE a.m. until THREE p.m.

For a homeschooling family, this is bliss.  I am with my boys all week, so it is no problem for me to ship them off to ski with excellent instructors for six hours at a time.

PLUS, this is the first year that it hasn't been an overwhelming favor to ask of a friend to watch our angelic little Squirt for a few hours so we can ski together.

OR, my beloved and our crazy friends can drag my butt all over the forbidden parts of our mountain.

May I show you the illustrated version, compliments of my crappy Blackberry phone camera?

Allrightythen.

First off, my husband informed me that the chairlift is actually farther to the left in the trees than my photo shows, but I'm lazy and didn't feel like re-doing the picture.

You get the idea.  We took Jupiter lift up and skied that little hill down.  Then, all in the name of fun, we took our skis off and hiked UP.

About 45 minutes later I joined all the in shape people Kenyon, Pete, and Deb at the top of Pinecone Ridge.

Below are the crazy lunatics that convinced me that this was going to be fun (Kenyon, Deb, and Pete).  I think Deb just likes having another girl hiking with her, but I think she's cool for keeping up with the boys.

Or, she's just happy about the nice nap she had time to take while waiting for me to hike my sorry butt up the mountain.

I realized at this point that all three of them are sales people in the business world and I felt like I got sold a bill of goods.  They are out of my league!

The BAD NEWS was that the snow conditions were sub-par.  To be blunt, it was like navigating skis through thick ice cream.  We all took a few tumbles amidst all our laughter.

The WORSE NEWS is that my posse did not know where in the heck they were going and we found ourselves in a THICK aspen forest.  See Pete disappearing into the trees?

No path, no room, no fun.

In the end, I was a sweaty, sore, frustrated, skeptical woman with broken branches sticking out of my helmet and snow packed down my pants.

We were half an hour late picking up Squirt at Jenny's house.  You can go here to see what she did to fill the time.

Now, if our little ski town would just get about two feet of fresh pow pow, I'll try it again.

With a trail map.

date night

While my hunters were hunting this fall, I took the opportunity to use some free tickets offered by our community soccer program to take my Sauce on a little date night.

I have been quite neglectful thus far in my parenting career to take time for one-on-one date nights with my boys.  It is definitely something that I've discovered is worth moving up my priority list.

Sauce has been ga-ga about sports from the time he could sit on his own.  His first word was "ball" and he has always been a little star in athletics.  It was a no brainer to take him to youth night at the Salt Lake Real (pronounced "Ray-Al") professional soccer game.

I pawned off the littlest men for the evening and Sauce and I went on our adventure.  I was pretty impressed that although some of his friends from his soccer team were there sitting around us goofing around and really not paying attention to the game, Sauce was captivated.

He watched and cheered as if we were watching the Chicago Bears out on the field.  The visiting opponents were the Chicago Fire soccer team, so I was torn as to who to cheer for.

Before the game:

All the youth soccer teams go to go out on the field for the National Anthem.  See my sauce in the lower left corner of the big screen???

My soccer star:

My handsome date: 

About a week later, Sauce brought up to me that he considered our date one of the best nights of his life.

I'm smitten!

freezing our baseballs off

Hunter and Sauce have graduated from T-Ball and have moved on to coach pitch this year.  Luckily, they are on the same team so I don't have double the carpooling.

Also, I don't have double the sitting in the stands freezing my butt off and pulling out all the lollipops tricks to entertain two little ones.

We have had such a wet and chilly June.  It has rained nearly every day for over two weeks now - and we are supposed to live in a desert!  I have never seen this much rain in seven and a half years here!

So this year, baseball has not been that much fun for me (but don't tell my little Tigers).

New to me this year, the boys got their first cups.  I completely avoided this like the plague deferred to my hubby on this one and sent them shopping.

I don't think I need to go into detail about the comments and antics that came about when these boys wore their "protection."

Use your imagination.

Let's just say there was a lot of "knocking" going on.

Here are a few shots from my perch.  I don't move around much because all of the fleece and blankets get in my way.

Summer is peeking around the corner

This weekend we've finally seen some temperatures in the upper 70's and lower 80's. We have savored every moment of it and much to the horror of our neighbors, we have neglected our lawn that is growing into a jungle from all the rain snow in May and June. Even though Squirt came down with his first ever ear infection, we've been taking family bike rides, jumping on our neighbor's trampoline, shooting magpies with a bow and arrow from the upstairs windows going to a minor league baseball game and not stopping to eat anything of substantial nutritional value.

Our good friend Todd Fischer gave the three older boys their first formal golf lesson (go figure, we live on a municipal golf course). Sauce has a passion for it and a natural swing, Hunter is equally passionate, and soaked up all the direction he could from Todd. Even Rufus hit a bucket of balls and we were amazed at how he connected with so many of them.

Here's Sauce:

Here is Todd with the boys:

Here's Rufus:

Squirt has been up to his own share of monkey business too. He's crawling all over the place and although he doesn't yet seem interested in walking, he finds his way to where he wants to go. It seems like every time we turn around he has climbed the stairwell and is entertaining himself in the outlets bedrooms and toilets bathrooms upstairs.

Aside from a busy schedule of swimming lessons and Vacation Bible School this week, we are finishing up our last couple weeks of T-Ball for Hunter and Sauce. They are having a blast and their coaches refer to them as "Rocket" and "Cannon" respectively.

t-ball punks

T-Ball season has started and Hunter and Sauce are on the same team (by request - makes my life a lot easier) - the Astros. They have only had one practice and haven't taken their new caps and jerseys off since Monday night.

Sweet Hunter, always aware of where Mom is on the sideline.

Sauce - totally focused on the ball

And here we have a glimpse into my time at t-ball...

Keeping him away from the bats and balls

Or serving as monkey bars for him to climb all over - he sure is cute though!

Little fish

The three older boys are in swimming lessons right now and they love it. It is two nights a week of chaos for me, as Kenyon is in school on both lesson nights and the lessons are at 5 and 5:30 p.m., so it is rush hour, "witching hour" with the boys (you moms know what I mean), but it still feels good to get out and give them some exercise on our long winter days!

This is what I'm doing when Cameron is in his lesson - feeding Squirt and Rufus hanging on me!


Sauce swimming


Hunter swimming