Little rippers

Since our last post, we've had 3 successful skiing trips as a family! Zac got on the slopes and absolutely loves it. He's on the harness but has picked up skiing really fast. He makes turns, looks super comfortable, and basically rips down the hill with all of us.

Tyler has moved on to skiing through the trees, terrain park (which includes skiing the boxes in the park eek!) and he got his wish and hit up a black diamond with Dave. They have no fear at this age. Tyler wants to zip all over the place and try everything new. I spend most of my time trying to catch up to him and following him through his explorations on the slopes. He loves going over little jumps and I gasp when he gets air off of them. I ski quietly behind him and let him do his thing.

Dave went to Utah for a few days, we went to Grammy's, Tyler and Sydney did some polkas, Grammy and the boys did the chicken dance, Tyler taught us all some dances from his dance-a-thon at school and we've been enjoying this wacky Winter.

In other news, Zac is going to have surgery to remove his goose egg that just won't go away. After multiple falls and hitting the same spot he's pretty much had a goose egg since last June. The nurse practitioner at our pediatrician office wanted us to go see plastic surgery just as a precaution. We went to a plastic surgeon two weeks ago and the doctor said the goose egg is never going to go down. It's either old blood or scar tissue under the soft tissue and that we should take care of it now or it will become a calcified hematoma and be like bone in years to come making it harder to get rid of down the road. The other option is to let Zac have a goose egg for the rest of his life and he pretty much wasn't allowing me to pick that option. It's an outpatient surgery and he'll get it done at CHOP in the city, so we're in good hands. Of course, I'm freaking out but the doctor reassures us this is no big deal from a doctor or parent standpoint.

Zac is such a little nugget and is growing up way too fast. He built an obstacle course in the house the other day - see the picture below that just looks like a messy house? - well that's actually an obstacle course. He continues to prove to us that he will keep up with his brother with everything he does. And his latest school picture has me smiling from ear to ear. The past few months they've actually become buddies. They play more together now that they're getting older and I want to stop time at the ages they're at and soak it all in a little more, but everyone is saying I can't :(

And the last big news is Tyler lost his first tooth! He pulled it during rest time at school and came home with his tooth necklace on. He was so excited and the tooth fairy gave him $5 for his first tooth!!

Ski bums

We've waited 6 long years for this to happen and dare I say it's happening! We are all on skis together!!

Dave, Tyler and I skied together the other day and by the end of day we were cruisin blues with Tyler and actually skiing at a good pace. We also were explaining to Tyler that we can't quite go on a black diamond just yet, but he's ready and anxious to get down one. He's also discovered the little bumps on the side of slopes and loves to ski them! Something clicked last time we went and he's becoming really comfortable on his skis and declared "I think I want to be a professional skier when I grow up!"

Up until this past weekend, Zac has not shown interest in getting on his skis. So we haven't taken him since we don't want to force him to do ski then have him hate it. On Sunday, out of nowhere, Zac decided he wanted to ski in the backyard. Dave was gone all day so I put some skis on him and thought we'd give it a try. I held his shirt the first time down the hill then he said he didn't need help.

Low and behold he didn't! Off he went down the hill about 30 times throughout the day and I carried him back up the hill as his human ski lift 30 times. He even did some night skiing as he was so excited to show Dave when he got home that we had a second round of skiing later in the evening. While we waited for Dave, we had a snowball fight, like a legit one where I was bombing snowballs at my kids and they were equally bombing them back at me. This whole growing up thing is proving to be pretty fun :)

We plan to all head out to the slopes this weekend and have our first family ski day!

Tyler and the "bumps"



Zac first time down the hill!







And since it's Winter, we have to look for creaative ways to stay busy. There's Home Depot trips where "cops and robbers" is played in the aisles, riding weird animal toys at the mall, riding escalators and hours of sleigh riding! Just when our 2 feet of snow melted yesterday we got a fresh new coat of about 3 inches this morning to keep us busy this weekend. Mother nature sure knows how to take care of us!