Second Ski Day

We're home safe and sound--more details on that tomorrow. Today I wanted to share some pictures and stories from yesterday. I took this first photo at the top of the mountain. From left to right is Anthony, Patrick's Dad Ernie, Patrick, and Alex.

We went to Copper Mountain yesterday. Patrick's parents have been skiing at Copper this season because they have season passes there. The prices have gone up in recent years, and Copper gives them a better deal. That meant that we got a better deal also, since they were able to get us a good discount on ski lift tickets.

We got to ski with Patrick's Dad for an hour or so before he wanted to sit down, so we went down to the bottom and called Patrick's Mom to come pick him up. She brought Natalie and Eric and we had lunch together. The prices were astronomical, even higher that what we usually pay. Patrick had a grilled cheese sandwich with fries, Anthony had an Awesome Burger with fries (apparently that's what it was called), Alex had a slice of pepperoni pizza, a fruit cup, and a Powerade, and Natalie shared three chicken strips with Eric. We paid over $64 for that! I decided to wait until I got home to eat, but I did have some of Alex's fruit cup with some water. Patrick's Dad also had some lemonade.

After lunch, Patrick and I got to ski some more with the big boys. Patrick took this photo of me with my big boys when we got back up to the top of the mountain. We're all pretty bundled up, so after Patrick took the picture, I joked to Alex, "Did you smile?" The temperature was probably in the upper teens to low 20s and windy, but I was bundled up enough that I was fine, except for when we were up on the chair lift--then I got cold. I actually got hot when we were waiting in the chair lift lines.

I was done first, and Patrick dropped me off at the bottom of the mountain and went back up to meet the boys. He skis a lot faster than the rest of us and easily caught up with the boys. I don't like to ski too fast or I feel out of control. My knees start to burn from all the effort I put into turning, slowing down, etc., so I stop for a bit every so often to rest my knees. When that resting got too often, I was done. Patrick was done before the boys. Alex kept telling me how much he loved to ski.

We didn't leave Copper Mountain until 4pm. In the past we would be done by lunch, so we had quite a full last day of skiing.

First Ski Day

We only get to ski two days this trip. The boys wanted time to spend with their friends at home, and I tried to get the cheaper plane tickets. We didn't have the energy to ski our first day, so we saved the skiing for our second full day.

Eric needed lessons since he could barely stop on skis when we were here two years ago. Interestingly, when we were renting his gear at Arapahoe Basin (or A-Basin), he recognized the guy helping us as someone he saw there last time. Since he was four years old the last time we came, that's a pretty good memory for a four year old.

We chose A-Basin because they had half-day lessons available there. A whole day would have been too much for him. We've also had good luck with lessons there, for all of us. We had to get there early, before 9am in order to get his gear and then have him ready for lessons at 10am.

I thought he was pretty cute standing there with one ski boot on. He didn't understand why that was, at first. Patrick told him that was because they needed to fit the ski boots to the skis, and they only needed one. Of course, the one he was wearing had the tag for them to scan, so when they asked for that, Patrick picked him up and turned him upside down so that the guy could scan the boot Eric was wearing. It was too quick to take a picture, but it was pretty hilarious.

After Eric got all his gear, Anthony wanted to take a picture of his skis next to Eric's skis. We turned that into a photo op where I took a picture of all four of them. Eric has his eyes closed because of the bright sun.

Alex and Anthony got the same size ski boots, and Patrick and Anthony have the same size skis. Alex could have gotten the same size skis, but he felt like he was more of a beginner and therefore he was more comfortable with slightly shorter skis.

I wanted to take a picture of Patrick with the boys at the top of the mountain. They ended up on the less majestic side, so the background is just a big snow bank. I love this picture, though, because Alex decided to pose for me. Of course, I ended up putting my finger over part of the picture, so it's not as good as it could have been, but I really love Alex giving me "attitude" this time.

On our next trip up, I got this photo. It was a beautiful, clear day. I might try to do a little Photoshop magic when I get home to erase the people in the background, but the view is just incredible. I also love that we were able to ski with the boys. They have quite a bit more energy than I do, but they stopped and waited for me and I loved and appreciated that.

After Eric finished with his lesson at 1230, we had some lunch. Eric said he enjoyed skiing, but he didn't want to have another ski lesson. Patrick went out to the small hill to see how he was doing. He wanted to see if there was any way Eric would be able to ski with us on the mountain. Unfortunately, he found out that Eric really needed at least one more lesson before he could go up on the mountain with us, and we didn't want to force him if he wasn't interested. So today, Eric got to stay home with Natalie and Grandma. I'll try to post about that tomorrow.

Ice Castles

I'm not sure how many of my photos will make into this blog post. The internet is especially slow today. I posted a couple of photos on Facebook already. We went to a place called Ice Castles yesterday afternoon. I saw some YouTube music videos lately that were filmed at one of the Ice Castles locations in the country. Since Natalie isn't able to swim with her back still healing, we thought this might be a fun thing for her to do so that she doesn't feel like she's missing out. The description on their website is as follows:

"Visitors often ask how we create the ice formations that we call ice castles. We start by “growing” more than 5,000 icicles each day that we harvest and sculpt together. Newly placed icicles are then drenched in freezing water. The blend of icicle placement, changing temperatures, water volume, and wind result in an astonishing variety of ice formations. And so all of the beauty you see at the ice castle is a unique blend of an artistic eye and mother nature’s work.

We repeat this process once or twice a day, depending on temperatures. and after about a few weeks of growth we can create very large towers, tunnels, archways, caves, caverns, and safe pathways for pedestrian exploration. Continued development of the structures throughout the winter results in an evolving ice masterpiece. Odds are, that if you come to visit one of our ice castles more than once you’ll have two very different experiences."

As you can see from all the pictures, it was snowing a lot that day--so much so that Patrick's sister Linda postponed her trip home. She drove in from Albuquerque, NM, just to see us. The weather did end up clearing up today, so she got to go home as planned. We saw a lot of trucks stopped on the side of the road awaiting better driving conditions, though.

I took the first picture above right when we got into the Ice Castle, to make sure we got everyone in at least one picture. The second picture is my favorite, just because it really shows a lot of the icicle formation as well the cool archways. Eric is always my very willing photography subject.

The third picture has an interesting story behind it. I saw the archway and wanted a photo. I decided that I needed at least one photo with my college son in it, and Natalie was the perfect companion for him. Patrick was taking video behind them and I told him to move. Instead of moving out of the archway completely, he decided to crouch down low. Thanks, honey--I can still see you.

This fourth picture definitely has a great story. Eric saw this ice formation and decided to lean behind it. Patrick decided it would be cool to extend Eric out and pretend to be pulling him out of the ice. It does make a funny picture. After we took this photo, Eric decided to hold himself horizontally, even without Patrick there.

Grandma had already escaped to the car because she was cold. The snow seemed to be coming down even more and it was getting windier. I saw this little area where there was only room for one person to walk through one at a time. I realized that I didn't have a picture of just the boys, so I told them all to stand in that little space. Alex hit his head as soon as he got in there. In fact, he said he must have hit his head twenty times. There was another area where you had to crawl on your hands and knees through to a cave area where you could actually stand. Anthony went in there with him and the cave was tall enough that he could stand in there too. Alex refused because he said that he had already been in there and hit his head.

Of all the times we've visited Grandma and Grandpa in Colorado, I've never been to this place, so it was nice to do something different. Apparently it's also very pretty when it's lit up at night, but it was getting colder, and we weren't too keen in being outside too much longer.

Today we went skiing. I hope to be able to get another blog entry up tomorrow.

We're here!

For those of you not on Facebook, I took this picture of the boys yesterday when we were waiting for Patrick to park the car so we could go through security. There were circular sofas in the airport terminal, and Eric decided to get in the middle. Anthony was probably playing Pokemon and not paying attention to the rest of us. Alex decided to make a funny face for me--I don't mind as long as he lets me get a picture. Natalie was grouchy and I wasn't even going to ask her to be in the picture. Eric has a sweet smile as usual. He was pretty excited to be going on the plane to see Grandma and Grandpa.

It took us forever to get through security between the six of us getting our stuff on the conveyor belt to be checked, and some of us having to remove our shoes, to having my bag checked individually, etc. We had a pretty uneventful flight otherwise, and we even landed a half hour ahead of schedule.

There was some traffic initially, but most of the trip to Grandma and Grandpa's place was also uneventful. Eric was tuckered out and took a nap during the car trip. The mountains are especially beautiful right now because of all of the snow they've been getting.

Grandma had some beef stew in the crock pot awaiting our arrival. Patrick's sister Linda is here visiting just so she could see us. We're here only a short period of time, long enough to get a little skiing done, but short enough that the boys get to be at home to see their friends during their Spring Break. Natalie gets to see her godmother, in fact, she's staying in the same bedroom with her for now, talking her ear off, I'm sure.

I hope everyone has a great week! Grandma's internet is a little slower than I'm used to, and it took me a couple of tries to post the photos, but I'll try to post more photos as the week goes on.

He's Home!!!

Anthony had an uneventful flight home today. His plane even got in early. Natalie and Patrick picked him up from the airport. Eric wanted to hug him as soon as he got home, but he had to wait until Anthony came in from the garage. Anthony bent down to hug him and picked him up off the floor in doing so.

Now that I'm looking at this picture, I've realized that the picture looks a little awkward. You can barely see Eric's feet since his pants are a little long and his feet are mostly covered by his pants. Anthony is bent over while also holding his winter coat, that of course he doesn't have to wear here. Eric gives great hugs like this to me all the time.

Anthony wasted no time in making himself at home. He set up his laptop and sat in his favorite La-Z-Boy chair in our living room and he stayed there for a good part of the afternoon. He did play chess with Alex. Alex won the first game in about six moves. He said that Anthony was a little rusty at chess. They were in the middle of another game when we went to church then out to eat at one of Anthony's favorite restaurants, El Mirasol. Now, Anthony is out with his best friend Alejandro. We're sure he'll get in some time after we go to bed.

The kids have all been super excited to see Anthony. They were even up to their old antics. Even at church they would poke each other and then point to someone else as being the culprit. At dinner they rekindled their little joke where they tried to switch the "g" and "j" sounds of words. That one is very much an inside joke, but the point is that they were having fun with each other. Patrick and I didn't want to stop them, except for when they were getting loud and distracting at church.

Speaking of fun, this is a quick photo of Eric and Natalie at Baskin-Robbins tonight. We haven't been there in forever, but we wanted ice cream for dessert tonight and we wanted something closer to home. Since we had to head back home first to drop off Anthony and Patrick because Anthony was going to be going out again to meet Alejandro, we decided to go to Baskin-Robbins instead of Brindles.

Natalie and Eric both had the Rainbow Sherbet. Alex had a shake, this time it was with the Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream. For the first time I didn't get the Jamoca ice cream. I actually got their Flavor of the Month, Bananas Foster ice cream. The description says that it is "Bananas Foster flavored ice cream complete with a brown sugar rum flavored ribbon and praline pecans". I don't normally like nuts in my ice cream, but these were crunchy and sort of had the texture of toffee bits. Yum!

Bored

It's so good to see Natalie smiling! She had just taken a shower and she came down to the kitchen to have some of the Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread that I had just taken out of the oven. A week or two ago I had made "regular" Banana Bread with chocolate chips--a recipe that I had gotten from my mom. Alex loved it, as he loves anything with banana and chocolate. Natalie merely said that she "liked Aunt Cynthia's better" and also added that Aunt Cynthia's recipe is "more chocolatey". Natalie is all about chocolate. So, I got the recipe from my sister, and I made it today.

Natalie has been so sad lately. She really wants to swim again. She hasn't been able to see her friends either. To top it off, we are going skiing and if her back isn't better, she can't ski.

She's at least had one little distraction this week. Her friend Margot is very interested in a local BASIS Charter School. They are supposed to have more challenging classes and apparently a large amount of homework goes with that. The brother of one of Alex's old soccer teammates goes there, and Patrick called his mom to find out about the school. Natalie came home very excited on Tuesday and she said that she "really wanted to go" to this new school.

Patrick took her to the info session on Wednesday. We're a little afraid that she would be taking on too much along with swimming two hours every night, but she's bored in school now. Every time I ask her if she likes school she says, "It's boring." When Alex chose a tougher school for middle school, he was very excited about it and really wanted to go. We want Natalie to be excited about school too. We'll put her on the list for now, and then we'll see if we'll actually go.

Natalie's Quilt Project

Natalie was working on a project for school this weekend. She had to fill out a packet of questions which included where her relatives were born and when. That part was due last Friday. She worked on the creative/presentation part of the project this past weekend. She printed out flags from some of the countries where her ancestors came from. As you can see from this first page, with Patrick and I as her parents, she had quite a few countries to choose from.

I let her do these pages all by herself. She helped herself to my card stock and she admitted trying to use as many different types of washi tape as possible to attach the pictures. I guess I didn't mind because I personally would have found it hard to choose.

The project instructions said that printing the pictures on plain paper was fine, so I didn't try to print them on photo paper. The quality would have been better, but that would have required more time to upload these and then pick them up.

This second page contains photos of a couple of vacations with the family (to Colorado and last year when we were on a cruise). I've posted one of the pictures before, of Natalie with her cousins trying to read each others' minds using aluminum foil hats they fashioned themselves. She also needed a picture of Filipino food, and I actually haven't taken a lot of photos, so I used a photo that I took at my Dad's 80th birthday party a couple of years ago.

Natalie used pictures of two of my scrapbook pages to show a family tradition. I get handprints of the kids every year and I write how tall they are and how much they weigh, along with a picture of the four of them.

I also usually try to take a picture of the kids with Santa hats in front of the Christmas tree, so she used the last picture as another example of a family tradition. The other picture is of the last Easter when the kids were breaking brightly colored confetti-filled eggs (called cascarones) over each others' heads.

Finally, I took a picture of two recipes that my mom gave me. I really didn't have anything else that qualifies as a family recipe. I usually get recipes from cookbooks and from the internet rather than get them from my mom. That makes visiting my mom and eating those dishes even more special since I don't get them anywhere else.

Natalie didn't ask me for any help in creating these pages, except for choosing and printing the pictures and using my supplies. I have a little scrapbooking experience that I might have used to help her design the pages to be more "visually appealing" and easier to follow. Still, I especially love that she did these herself.

She did her presentation in front of the whole class this week. She hasn't received the teacher's comments back yet, but I hope she does well. She did a great job.

As for a back injury update, she said last Sunday that her back felt much better. We thought that after seeing the doctor, she could possibly go back to swimming and PE this week. Unfortunately, she hurt her back again at school on Monday when she bent down to pick something up. When I got home that day, we had a talk about how to lift things while using your legs and not your back, but it was too late. Right now she doesn't get to ski next week. I really hope her back gets better soon.

Spring Soccer for Eric

Eric wanted to play soccer again, and since we were happy with the experience during the fall season, we went ahead and signed him up with the SA United club again. Anthony was with the same club when he was playing club soccer. We don't expect that Eric will automatically play soccer like his big brothers, but for now he enjoys it.

As you can see from the background, it was really foggy yesterday (Saturday) morning. Alex's high school soccer games overlapped with Eric's game, so Patrick was watching Alex's game and I was with Eric for his game. If Natalie had not injured her back, she would have had a swim meet also, so the injured back has been a mixed blessing. Patrick and I can still go to two different events at the same time, but we still have not managed to figure out how to go to more than two events at the same time. Natalie stayed home by herself to get some extra rest and to work on her school project due on Monday.

Eric was in a contrary mood. He has a gold SA United shirt that he wears for practice. This was the first game, so he didn't have his team shirt until we showed up at the field and got it. He is on the white team, named "Galaxy". All the teams have the same names as the MLS teams. He didn't want to take off his gold shirt, however. He wanted to put on the white shirt on top of the gold one. He also didn't want to remove his jacket, at first, at least until he was on the opposite side of the field and I couldn't hold the jacket for him. He also had a bad problem at first with a runny nose, so he needed tissues constantly. He got upset with me when I tried to help him. He said that I was holding the tissue too tightly to his nose (so I could catch the boogers) and that he couldn't blow out. Oh my. What a grump.

Luckily, he usually behaves for his teachers and coaches. There were eight boys on his team, so they all got to play half the time. They should have mixed them up a little, because obviously there were differences in playing ability, but oh well, they all got to play.

The other team was all girls. The girls all seemed way more coordinated and better at bringing the ball down the field, especially for one or two of them. I took this picture to show that Eric did participate, instead of just hanging back at the end of the long string of players running after the ball in almost single file. They still do that at this age. He did that too, but at least in this picture he tried to block a player from the other team from getting to the ball. He even scored a goal--for the other team. He did not realize that the teams had switched goals when he wasn't on the field playing.

This is the girl that scored almost all the goals for the other team. I am just tickled when I see this picture and the one above, when there is a very obvious size difference between Eric and the girls on the other team. Both teams are supposed to be made out of six and seven year olds. Girls just get bigger at an earlier age. Eric is actually trying to stop this girl from getting the ball. Go Eric!

I stopped counting score after this girl scored four goals. Their coach was even trying to get them to practice passing instead of one player just taking the ball the whole way down the field by herself. I heard one of the boys saying that they lost 2-13. I'm not sure it was quite that bad, but it was probably pretty bad. At least they all had fun. Eric loves playing soccer. Who knows, maybe he will decide to keep playing soccer like his big brothers. We're signing him up for baseball next.

Alien Worlds and Androids

Well, I thought it was time to invade Melanie's blog again and post a few pictures from the opening of the "Alien Worlds and Androids" exhibit at the Witte Museum this past Saturday. --Warning: this post is picture heavy-- I decided to take Eric and Natalie to the opening hoping that it wouldn't be too crowded. Well, the exhibit was very crowded so we didn't get to spend much time there. We had to stand in line outside the museum before going in which was not a great sign. Eric had a blast though. While waiting outside he got to wear a "space helmet" (just a toy/costume piece but he loved it).

The exhibit itself provides a lot of information about different planets scientists have identified, discussion of different types of life found in extreme conditions here on earth, and ideas of what might exist somewhere else. It also provides a lot of information about robots (androids) and the various uses we have for robots now, and what the future might hold. There are lots of displays in the exhibit itself, but the exhibit was so crowded we decided to do some of the "member activities."

This includes having pictures taken with a lot of Star Wars characters that were at the museum just for this purpose. I believe they are all part of a club here in San Antonio and were exceptionally patient posing for pictures. Eric had an absolute blast. He was thrilled and overjoyed to pose for pictures. Natalie helped take some pictures and even posed for one picture, something unusual for her lately.

After taking numerous pictures we headed to some of the activities they had for the opening. This included watching some small robots, Eric even got a chance to control one of the smaller robots. The also played with some dough to make "creatures" and could put small lights on them. Although we didn't really spend much time in the new exhibit (we will definitely go back) we had a great time and Eric was on cloud nine.

Valentine's Day

I totally forgot to post about Valentine's Day. Alex didn't have practice that day, so Alex and I were able to get home by about 5pm.

Patrick bought roses to decorate the kitchen island and he also had another vase with roses in the middle of the dining table. Patrick doesn't give me flowers very often and I'm fine with that because I'd rather get stuff that lasts a while, like a new purse or clothes, but I still enjoy receiving flowers. The fact that he put them in a couple of our beautiful vases made them even more special.

I requested salmon for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert. We didn't do anything special last year, probably because Natalie was going to be in the A Championships the next day. The year before, in 2012, Patrick made chocolate fondue and it was fabulous! He doesn't make it very often, in fact, I only remember the time he made it two years ago, but I think he may have made it some other time in between. He cut up bananas, strawberries, and french bread to dip into the chocolate. Yum!

The kids loved the grilled salmon--one of our favorite family meals, and the loved the chocolate fondue even more. Way to go, Papa! Thanks for a wonderful Valentine's Day meal!

Natalie Back Update

I last posted about Natalie's back pain last week. This week she complained that it was worse. She went back to the doctor on Wednesday. She had X-rays done to make sure there wasn't anything structurally wrong--there wasn't. The muscles in her back were really tight and on Friday, she got a prescription for a muscle relaxant. She's been taking that this weekend, but right now she can't tell the difference.

Meanwhile, Natalie's coach was able to pull her out of the swim meet that was held today plus the swim meet next weekend. She was disappointed, but at least we didn't have to pay for the entry fees this way. The doctor said she should not participate in PE or in swimming until the doctor clears her. Natalie complains now about being bored in PE. She wants to at least walk around the track since she walks around at school all day anyway. Apparently she's been picking up volleyballs and such during PE, so in other words, she probably could be resting more. We'll see what happens this next week.

For those of you that aren't on Facebook, I posted something interesting about Natalie there today. She has a school assignment where she was asking about her relatives' full names and birthplaces. She was being very needy and I had to repeat every name and place at least three times for her. At one point, I was telling her that her Papa was born in Argentina. She said, "How do you spell Argentina?" I laughed because she really wasn't trying very hard. While I was laughing, Eric started spelling "Argentina", and he spelled it correctly. He then said, "All you have to do is sound it out, Natalie!" Later, when I told her the cities where her Lola and Lola (my parents) were born in the Philippines, she said, "Why can't the city names be in English?"

Soccer Again

After many years of soccer games year round, with Anthony and Alex both playing in club soccer, and Anthony playing in high school, we're out of the habit of going to a soccer game every weekend. Alex stopped playing club soccer last spring, so he hasn't been playing in any soccer games until last month when his high school soccer games started. He's played in a couple of tournaments, but no games on the weekend yet. Patrick and I have gone separately to weekday games, but the weekend games have been cancelled due to cold weather. Last weekend, we both went to Alex's away game vs. Johnson, and we took Eric with us.

It was a pretty nice day, windy but with the temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s. I still needed a jacket, but Eric was fine with his short sleeve shirt on. I took Alex to school at 7:15am, went home to meet up with Patrick and Eric, and then we went to Alex's away game at 9am. His team played okay in their first few games, but often had trouble scoring. They were playing a traditionally good team, so I didn't get my hopes up too high.

Alex's team is coming along, though. They were actually passing during this game and more importantly, they were able to score. Patrick and I thought Alex played well, although he never thinks that he played well. They have some good players on their team, and I'm glad that they are starting to work together. They won the game 1-0. This was a nice change from last year when Anthony's Varsity team lost every game. I went to another game just yesterday, and they played well overall, and I can see that they are getting better and better, but Churchill is always a tough team to beat. They lost to them 1-2.

Eric kept busy during the game by using the bleachers as his jungle gym. He would climb up and down the seats, often jumping down to the ground. Once in a while he would come give me a hug and kiss. He started soccer again just this week, so we'll be going to a few more weekend soccer games in the next month.

February Art a la Carte

Eric's February Art a la Carte class was this past week. This time, instead of being off for the day, I had to work on call at the hospital the night before. Luckily, I got a chance to nap before meeting Eric for lunch.

This time I took a picture of the example that Mrs. R, the art teacher, had put on the bulletin board. The art lesson involved a little information about Norman Rockwell and how he liked doing self-portraits. They were focusing especially on winter-themed paintings.

First, she had the kids look into a mirror to see what shape their faces were. If their faces were more oval shaped, she had them draw around their hands with their fingers close together, and if their faces were circle shaped, she had them draw around their hands with their fingers farther apart. I thought this was a great way to help the kids draw the shape, although the problem was that their hands were so small that they had to draw way around their hands to get heads that were of a decent size.

Eric was very set on certain things. The example hat that they were supposed to draw had a puff ball on top, but Eric modeled his after his Minion beanie hat, so there was no puff ball. He thought about drawing a bunch of Minions on his yellow Minion hat, but in the end, he decided not to. This was probably a good thing because he would have had a difficult time drawing that detail with the chalk pastels.

They were also supposed to add some other colors to the background, such as more blue in different shades, and then snowflakes, but Eric most definitely did not want any of that, just more white. Mrs. R also told them to draw buttons on their coat, but Eric wanted a zipper, like on his coat. I love that he knew what he wanted and he stuck with it.

He wasn't the only one that had set ideas of his own. One of the other boys decided to draw an Iron Man hat and scarf--lots of red with yellow for Iron Man's mask. A couple of the kids said that they really loved art class. I do too, and I love learning a little each time I volunteer.

January Art a la Carte

This is a blog post that I should have written and published last month, but I didn't get a picture of Eric and his art work because there wasn't enough time. I took the artwork pictures just this last week, so now I can share them in this blog post. Meanwhile, I hope I haven't forgotten too much of the details.

This first picture is of a chalk pastel that Eric did last month. His class won an extra art class because of their good behavior. I didn't know about this extra art class until the day of the regularly scheduled January class. I saw this hanging in the area that Eric's class artwork is usually hung and I wondered whose stuff that was. Eric's name is so subtle on this artwork that I didn't see it until I found out that this was from the extra class. I thought he did a pretty decent job with his owl.

I brought the usual lunch for Eric--Wendy's spicy chicken nuggets and vanilla Frosty. For some reason, we started talking about being able to raise one eyebrow. I can raise one eyebrow when I want to. Patrick cannot. When he sees me doing it, he usually starts laughing and then sometimes he will put his hand up to one eyebrow to keep it from moving so he can try to raise one eyebrow back at me.

This picture is Eric's attempt to raise one eyebrow only. He actually did raise one eyebrow at one point, but only when he wasn't thinking about it so hard. I couldn't get a picture when he did that, but I thought this picture was adorable. He looks a little quirky, but still endearing.

The lesson for the January Art a la Carte class was about using repetition in art in the style of Gustav Klimt. The inspiration piece was based on his painting, The Kiss. This required a lot of extra help, and so they had asked for five volunteers, one for each table. I convinced Patrick to come help also. He didn't come for lunch, but he arrived when Eric was finishing up his lunch.

The reason why they needed so many volunteers was that there were a lot of steps involved. First, the kids had to paint the background brown. There was one little boy especially who kept trying to get into the paint prematurely. One of the teachers stayed to watch him and him only, and then the co-teacher came to relieve her halfway through class.

There was also a lot of cutting. They cut the "blanket" out of yellow paper and also the "grass" out of green paper. They did some drawing with markers--the flowers on the grass, and the different circles and spirals you can see in Eric's artwork. The white and black pieces of paper were pre-cut before class. I helped cut some of those during a prep class on a different day.

By that time they were starting to rush because class was almost over. The kids were supposed to draw themselves and something or someone else they loved. One of the kids mentioned a Minion from Despicable Me 2. Eric loves Minions. He was trying to draw one and was particularly frustrated because it didn't look like he wanted to.

Now, some of the other volunteers were being almost too helpful to some of the kids. One of them was basically gluing and drawing stuff on her daughter's artwork. I guess she felt like her daughter should have glued more white and black pieces on or drawn more flowers/spirals. I really believe that the artwork has to be the child's artwork. They aren't being graded on this anyway. They just need to have fun with it.

Even though my OCD tendencies always make me want to reach in there and help Eric all the time, I don't--unless he asks me to. He has so much fun doing this stuff and in the end it usually looks pretty decent and I can say that he did it all by himself. The exception was when I drew a Minion head for him. He started looking a lot less frustrated at that point and started drawing the Minion body and arms. He also drew the side view of himself as instructed by his art teacher. Yes, this art is definitely Eric.

Back Injury

Natalie hurt her back early last week during PE. During part of the “Pacer Test” her back and ankle started hurting. Of course, Natalie being Natalie, she continued to run until she made the minimum number of laps to be considered a “100” for the fitness test before telling the coach that she was hurt. Patrick received a phone message about it and called the school nurse. They told him that her ankle was hurt but they put ice on it and she was back in class. When Natalie came home her ankle still hurt but she was also complaining about her back. She took swim practice off that evening but tried to swim the next night. During that practice her back hurt enough that she only pulled through practice because kicking hurt.

We immediately thought of a couple of years ago when Alex complained of his back hurting. The doctor said then that it was because Alex was growing so fast that his muscles were getting stretched and therefore hurting him. Natalie, although she is physically changing, does not have that same problem of getting too tall too fast. We were concerned about her complaints of it hurting, but she didn’t really look or act like she was hurting that much. We weren't sure if she was just stoic and was really hurting a lot but not showing it, or she was not hurting that much. When she had Swimmer's Ear, she didn't want me touching her ear, but she still kept swimming, and I was told that swimming with Swimmer's Ear hurts a lot.

She still wanted to go to swim practice. Fortunately some practices were cancelled due to weather or conflicting meets so she got some additional rest. This past Monday night she swam again, and again she simply couldn’t kick much without pain. We talked with her about it and told her that she needed to be able to practice fully, or not practice at all. On Tuesday she came home from school saying her back hurt worse than the day before. Patrick made an appointment for Natalie to see the doctor the next morning.

The doctor examined her and said that Natalie strained the muscles in her lower back and that trying to work out with it aggravated the injury and caused it to spread. She said the other back muscles work harder to compensate for the injured ones. The doctor also said no swimming and PE for a “minimum” of one week.

This evening, Natalie’s friend Margot was visiting, and Natalie was complaining about having to sit out of PE because it was “boring to just watch.” Maybe we should have just said she needed to rest her back, but she'll actually do it now that the doctor told her to rest and not just her silly parents. The doctor stressed to her that she needs to let her back heal before going back or she would just re-injure it and have the injury spread.

Unfortunately, she has a swim meet next weekend, so we'll see if she recovers enough to be able to go to swim practice before then or even if she'll be able to swim in the meet. On the plus side, this frees up our week a little. Eric starts soccer practices next week and Alex's soccer season is in full swing with practices every day after school and games once or twice per week.

Beautiful Weekend

After the cold weather this past week, the weekend was beautiful. The cold weather isn't my favorite, but the part I really didn't like was the wet weather and the gray skies. I was really ready for some sun!

These are just a couple of photos that Patrick took of Alex and Eric at our neighborhood park. I really love seeing those two together. Despite their very large size differences, they get along so well. I especially love the second photo because Alex is showing Eric a video he made. Eric was basically talking like a Minion from Despicable Me 2 and Alex added a special effect which consisted of five videos of the same thing within the one video. He even texted it to me.

We actually didn't have anything scheduled this weekend, except for a work thing for me on Saturday morning. Alex's soccer game was cancelled on Saturday and they thankfully let us know about it ahead of time. Otherwise, Patrick would have had to take Eric with him to Alex's school early in the morning when he would have had to drop Alex off for the away game.

Natalie wanted to go shopping so, since it was nice outside, we went to the "outside mall", La Cantera Mall. We went to Barnes and Noble first where I had to keep Natalie from buying all of the 10 or so books that she picked out. She narrowed it down to two. Then, it was still too early and the stores had not yet opened (this was on Sunday at 1130am), so we went to lunch. I shared a pizza with my baby girl then we went shopping at Forever 21. Every time we go to that store, I'm surprised at how cheap their prices are--$70 for two pairs of jeans, three camis, two bras, one shirt, and one lace dress. After shopping we had ice cream at Brindles.

It's turning colder again, but it should warm up again after that. Some people have complained about the warm then cold, warm then cold weather. I like that it doesn't stay cold for long.

First Filling

Eric got his first filling in one of his teeth on Thursday of this past week. Patrick took him to our family dentist. Dr. C said that he often referred his pediatric patients to a pediatric dentist nearby, but he felt like Eric didn't need that. Patrick said Dr. C did a great job showing Eric the different instruments he was going to use, including the drill. He explained what they were for, and even turned on the drill so Eric could hear what it sounded like. Eric is a very good listener.

He had no fear. He jumped right up on that dentist's chair. They put some sunglasses on him to protect his eyes from the light they used to see what they were doing. Dr. C put some numbing stuff on Eric's gum so he wouldn't feel the small amount of local anesthetic Dr. C injected to numb the tooth. Eric just lay there quietly until the end. They said that some of their adult patients don't do this well.

Patrick said they were all commenting on how impressed they were at how calm Eric was and that Natalie had also been a good patient when she had her first filling. Luckily, Natalie has not had any more fillings since then and hopefully Eric won't have any more either. Still, it's nice to know that if he gets another cavity and needs another filling, he will have no problem at the dentist's office.

They didn't want Eric to eat solid food right away since his mouth was still numb, so Patrick bought him a Sonic vanilla shake and kept him home from school the rest of the day. He got Eric some Wendy's to eat later and that was his reward for being such a good boy.

Snow!

This isn't terribly dramatic, but we did have a light dusting of snow yesterday morning. It was mostly melted by the afternoon, with a little of the white stuff still on the roof on many of the houses in our neighborhood. The temperatures stayed right around freezing all day and went below freezing again last night. There was no interruption in schools or work for the most part, although there were quite a few accidents during some peoples' morning commute.

Today, quite a few people said they saw sleet all over their backyard, and there were apparently some road closures earlier today, but everything was open again by the time I went home. Alex's Junior Varsity soccer game tomorrow was cancelled--one less thing for Patrick to do tomorrow. Natalie's swim practice was cancelled tonight.

Of course, this does not even compare to what other parts of the country are getting, including Anthony up in the Boston area. He had his regularly scheduled classes today.

Snow Day

Anthony actually sent me pictures yesterday (Wednesday). He texted us on Tuesday that Wednesday was going to be a Snow Day for him. He welcomed the small break since he has been super busy lately. He is taking two Mechanical Engineering classes and one higher level Math class this quarter, and because he also has an on-campus job and he's pledging with one of the fraternities, he doesn't even have time to Skype with us.

When he sent me these photos, I asked him if he had "played in the snow" yet. He said that he would play in the snow once his homework was done. Priorities!

This is a picture of Anthony's dorm building covered in snow. Since I had taken pictures of his dorm building with a lot of green grass in front and all around this summer, I asked him for a photo of it now.

Tomorrow I'll share a photo of the snow we got here at home.

Super Bowl Party

So much for trying to post more often! Life has just gotten in the way. Later this week I hope to have a short blog post about some of the little things that have happened in the last week.

For today I want to write about the Super Bowl Party that we went to this past Sunday. Patrick had always planned on making his chili for Super Bowl Sunday. We were going to have a small gathering at our house, but then our good friends Al and Alicia invited us over to their house. They have a media room that Al finished out next to their garage.

Patrick still made the chili and then brought it over to their house along with margaritas. I decided to make some Sausage-Stuffed Jalapeños also. I looked up the recipe online but a friend made something quite similar a few years back and I've been wanting to try it since then. I also made the Rum Glazed Banana Cake that used to be a favorite a few years ago. That's another recipe that I haven't made in years. It's funny how life gets in the way...

We went over shortly before kickoff. Eric played with Sofia and Natalie hung out in Anna's room. Her friend Margot was also there because Margot's parents went to a different Super Bowl Party. Margot understandably chose to hang out with her friends instead. In fact, the girls never really came out of that room except maybe once to get something to eat.

Al, Patrick, and Alex hung out in the media room. Alicia and I chose to watch on their other big screen TV in the living room so that we could be closer to the food. I was so stuffed but I really enjoyed all the food, so I paced myself and kept eating.

Eric and Sofia got creative when we didn't allow them to get on electronics. They played with this play tunnel. First they put a remote control car on the floor and put this tunnel lengthwise on top of the car. When the car moved, it pushed the tunnel this way and that. They got tired of that game so they started taking turns dragging each other across the floor.

The football game wasn't very exciting, so after halftime, I decided to go home and get Eric ready for bed. I was getting a bit sleepy myself since I didn't get to take a nap due to all the cooking and baking. It was a low-key Super Bowl Party, but we enjoyed spending time with our good friends.