Concentration and determination

When Lizzie sets her mind to something, she does it.  The "something" right now is learning how to tie her shoes.

A holiday weekend

President's Day is known as the busiest ski weekend of the year -- so no skiing for the locals.  Instead, we went xcountry skiing, tubing, swimming, and bowling.  We even had a family slumber party in the little house.

We hit the jackpot at the roller rink, giving us over 1000 arcade tickets.  Lizzie got a skateboard, a giant gummy bear.  Carolyn got a siren light, headphones, and a fiberoptic night light. 

A few pictures of our weekend fun.

Just a day...

Just a day with these two awesome 4 years.  A trip to the grocery was much more fun with them.

Science fair

Science fair is a bit of a family affair in our house.  Carolyn brings us her questions, we brainstorm potential experiments, and then we work on it together.

This year, carolyn decided she wanted to learn about "temperature inversions" a weather phenomemon we experience in the winter as a result of living at the bottom of a bowl (we have a dense population surrounded by mountains on all sides).  When we have an inversion, air quality is bad.  All of our emissions get stuck under the inversion layer.  In fact, salt lake city has held the title of poorest air quality on some of our worst inversion days. 

While we may have learned about convection in science class -- and while we commonly know the adage "warm air rises, cold air sinks" -- it was fascinating to see the experiment she did.  It really helped me understand this unique weather phenomenon that makes us in salt lake city so aware of our emissions.

Sledding

This winter has brought us a lot of snow!  We had a particularly bad snow storm when we had friends visiting from out of town. The plan was to go up skiing, but the roads up the canyon were impassable.  So, we went sled riding instead.  This was a first for this Southern California girl.

More skiing

A family that skies together.....  has lots of fun!

It is true!

We added a new member to our family.  Her name is Mojo JoJo (we call her JoJo).  She is a 9 week old shihtzu poodle mix.  

How we have missed having a dog in the house! 

She seems to fit us just right.  The girls are absolutely smitten.

Gymnastics

Lizzie takes a gymnastics class.  Here are a few of her action shots.  She has definitely become more coordinated and less cautious since taking this class.  It is fun to see her come alive and become her own person.

Ski team

Both girls are in ski school for 10 weeks this year.  Every saturday, we all go up to the mountain.  The girls each ski with an instructor, while the adults ski on our own.

These are the photos from the first half of their sessions. Sadly, the photographer missed Lizzie's group completely.  But, here are a few from Carolyn's team.