Think Snow!

Having been a ski bum for two seasons, saying I love to ski is an understatement. As winter approaches I once again am growing itchy to spend some time on the mountain. Unfortunately, equipment woes have recently plagued me. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the interface between my anatomy and the equipment has plagued me. The last two pairs of ski boots that I have owned end up rubbing my shins raw at the top of the cuff after only a day of skiing, admittedly aggressive skiing, but this shouldn't be happening. One bootfitter suggested there may be an issue with the curvature of my tibia/fibula bones. Its gotten to the point where I was comtemplating not skiing. I am hopeful that my solution will come by way of telemark skiing. Giving the discipline a try last year, even on my two-days-of-alpine-bump-skiing-shin-bang-shin-bite-torn-up shins, there was no pain to speak of. Now, perhaps as I get better at the discipline a whole new crop of problems will spring up, but my friend made the switch for similar reasons. Plus he's such a good skier, I think he was bored with alpine. Anyway, I've become very excited about skiing again and recently took the kids on a minor road trip to try to find some tele gear. Coming home, I decided to try on Four's boots. I was nervous that Santa's unused gift from last year -- I know, I know -- would have to wait another year or more until LuLu could use them. Fortunately, they seem to still fit. Well enough that even after clicking into his skis and tooling around in the basement (on the rug only) and trying to do helicopters, Four was lounging around in the boots for quite some time. He is anxious to ski this season, asking, "When can we go?" and "When will it snow?" Last night, he insisted that I read him a book about snow. I am so looking forward to taking him skiing this season. Think snow.

Arabest

LuLu has been obsessed lately with "boo-lay" or ballet. I have been taking her to a Parent and Me Dance class at our gym. At first she didn't want to go because it wasn't ballet. Finally, I convinced her to give it a try saying that while it wasn't all ballet, they may do some ballet. Last night at dinner M asked her what she had done at dance class that day. Struggling ever so slightly at the end, LuLu replies, "I did a arabest." I had been struggling for most of the day to remember the word, "No, it not pique. Not sashay. Arrgh! What is it?", and while it had come back to me in the pool after class and I helped remember the arabesque, I could not command the word to my mind when M started the conversation. Even in class the teacher only had three or four of the older girls -- the class only goes up to 36 months -- do the pose at the very end of last day of the session, so LuLu only heard the word four or five times. But I guess it made an impression.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Zorro and our resident Flower! This year we made the kids costumes. I spent the Friday night and Saturday before Halloween in front of the sewing machine. I sewed Zorro's cape and belt and the flower's dress all without a pattern. So a few things got a little frustrating and several seams needed to be ripped out and re-sewn. But in the end the effort was worth it. We also made LuLu's flower collars, which was no-sew, but time consuming nonetheless. The kids had a great Halloween season, attending our town parade, a neighborhood party, a party and parade at school, and a pre-Trick-r-Treat parade -- now we just have to ration all that candy!

Happy Birthday Four!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Four recently turned five. In an e-mail sharing pictures with family I wrote the following:

We just got home from [Four's] birthday celebration at school. He was beaming the whole time. On the one hand, he was/is so grown-up (most of the time) that I can't believe he's only five. On the other hand, it seems like he was born just only yesterday, and I can't believe five years has flown by.

I've been wrestling with whether to continue refer to the boy as Four or to change his moniker to Five due to the age change. In the end, I've decided to continue with Four as it's often how I refer to him in my head when not blogging.