The James Five

Vail Part 4

I totally forgot to publish this post.  Here’s some more skiing fun.

After we took a few pictures, we wanted to let the kids all ski together.  We went over to the ski school area where they have magic carpets and a small lift for practice.

Kate J., Kate B, and Luke skied together a bit and John and I hung out with Alex.

Here’s Alex showing us how he can ride the Magic Carpet to the top of the hill.

Um, he gets a little distracted.

Abby, Kate J. and Kate B.

Then we skied with the big kids down the mountain while Alex and Livi waited at the top with sitters.

Kate made it all the way down the mountain! We were so proud of her and of Abby for skiing so well after only 2 1/2  days of lessons!

Farm Friends

This time it was Abby’s turn to go to the Farm Friends event.   And she hated it. Every second of it. She held her nose. And she even cried a bit. She told me over breakfast that she didn’t plan to touch any of the animals, and she stuck to her promise! She’s not much of an animal lover, you know.

I took this picture right as we walked in, while she was still smiling. Before her teacher encouraged her to touch a pig.  That’s when she lost it.

Jonah, Abby, Isabelle, and Maddie (look at her party pic expression, priceless!)

She finally cheered up when they got to the park for lunch! I left soon after lunch, but they played at the park for a couple of hours before heading back to school to watch a movie.  Fun day in kindergarten!

NYC 2012

Whew! John and I just got back from what seems like a complete whirlwind trip to New York.  We left on Sunday afternoon on a direct flight to La Guardia, but unfortunately, by the time we arrived, John was battling some sort of stomach virus or food poisoning.  AND it was pouring rain.  So our first day in NYC wasn’t too much fun. On the bright side, I guess, we did get caught up on Dallas on itunes.  Can’t wait to find out who shot JR!

Here’s the view from our hotel window.  We were on the Upper West Side, overlooking Lincoln Center and the NYC Ballet.  Our room was also overlooking road work that was performed every night from about midnight to 5am.  You’ll notice the bags under my eyes in every picture….

Late the next morning, John was starting to feel better, so we met up with the Turpins and had brunch at the Westside Diner.   It was my first time to eat at a real NYC diner; very cool.  Then we walked across Central Park and went to the Guggenheim (no pictures allowed in the museum, you know).  It was only raining a little off and on, and even though it was pretty chilly, it was a nice walk.

After the Guggenheim, John and I went back to the hotel to rest for a bit (he was still recovering!) and get ready to go to the Capezio 125th Anniversary event.  I cannot say enough about how fantastic the show was!  We had such a wonderful time. Again, no pictures of the show allowed..We have a group picture of everybody from Acumen who was there floating around somewhere…can’t remember whose phone we used to take the picture..Maybe we’ll get it posted on dance.com soon.

The next day, John was feeling much better so we slept late (remember the road work stopped about 5am, so that’s when we actually went to sleep), went for bagels, and then subway-ed downtown to Soho to do some shopping.  We didn’t end up getting there until lunchtime, so we walked around for a bit and then stopped at Balthazar for lunch.  Again, I didn’t take any pictures and I have no idea why. It was delicious! We did lots more shopping and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner at Buddakahn, which qualifies as one of my favorite meals of all time. We taxied back up to Broadway to see Jersey Boys.

I was so happy to be in a taxi instead of the subway.  John likes to pretend he’s a New Yorker and ride the subway, so I do, too.   Here’s Kirsty and me in the taxi, speeding uptown so we wouldn’t be late for the show.  We were late.  Should have taken the subway….

After the show, we walked back to the hotel, and then had to immediately go to bed because we had to get up early the next day.  We left for the airport on Wednesday morning at 5am, just as the jackhammering-roadwork was finishing up for the day….

Easter 2012

So instead of our normal egg hunt, we went to a Helicopter Egg Drop this year.  Candy filled eggs were dropped from a helicopter. So cool.  The kids thought it was awesome!

The kids were separated by age levels, and we let Alex go with the k-3rd grades because I was afraid he’d run over those little preschoolers!

I lost track of the girls once the kids started running. Alex is right in the middle in a dark blue shirt. He got distracted watching the helicopter and eating candy and ended up only getting a few eggs.  The girls were sweet enough to share some of theirs.

But….they had already sorted their candy.  They gave him all their Smarties, which is his least favorite candy. He was not happy with his sisters one bit.  This is what he did when he sat down to check out his loot. Poor baby.  We took him out for ice cream, don’t worry.

Easter Sunday we went to the Blessings for lunch after church.

And our family picture, such as it is..

I could not get any of these kids to smile sweetly! This one is funny.

Then we went home to see what the Easter Bunny brought.

The Dying of the Eggs

Abby’s first tooth

Abby lost her first tooth! It was barely hanging on in the morning when she went to school, and then it came out during lunch.  She was so excited about it. Don’t you love to see little kids with missing teeth? Adorable!

She left the tooth fairy 2 notes:

Hi, my name is Abby James.  I do not want you to take my tooth. By, Abby.

Please give me $1000.  What is your name? _____  This is my first time to lose a tooth.

She was not happy that the tooth fairy did not fill out her form and she did not leave her $1000, only $5.  I, personally, thought $5 was pretty generous….

Adventure Ridge

Ok, so after we skied down the mountain, we rode the gondola back up to go tubing at Adventure Ridge.  Boy, what fun that was!

But first, while Alex was waiting for us to finish skiing, he got to jump on the huge trampoline.  The babysitters told me he was yelling, “I’m Ironman!” every time he jumped, and he gained quite an audience.  Claire texted these to me while we were skiing. I was kind of terrified until I saw Alex afterwards.  He was so happy!

So back to the tubing.  First you grab a inner tube and ride up the hill (BIG hill).

Then you ride down really, really fast.  Here are Kate J. and B.  Those girls rode more than anybody!

Can you see the pure exhaustion on our faces? Dragging inner tubes around in altitude is much harder at 38 than at 8! We were both just about to collapse!

And Alex had the best time of all.   He was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe!  I took this with my phone as we were going down the hill at what seemed like 50 mph.

Abby was really tired after skiing down the mountain, and opted to hang out and wait for the big girls after she tubed a couple of times. She and Luke played in the snow for a bit.  Luke had gone snowmobiling instead of tubing and got finished earlier than we did.

We then hurried back to our rooms because the grown ups had our final dinner reservation in Vail.  This time for sushi at Matsuhisa (Nobu Matsuhia is considered one of the best chefs in the world so we were completely excited).   Now, most people would probably order something familiar like Spicy Tuna Rolls.  Oh no, not us.  We got the tasting menu, which didn’t even actually have a listing of the items.  You just eat what they bring you.   Let’s just say it was an adventure.  There were lots of courses, some of which I actually had to close my eyes and hold my breath to eat (the mackrel liver fois gras, for example).  But everything was amazing and most certainly memorable.  Everyone said it was their favorite meal of the trip!

Spring Break Part 3

On our last day of skiing, none of the kids went to ski school.  My kids were completely exhausted, so we just hung out in the room until lunchtime.  John and Jeff went out early to ski the back of the mountain, and met up with us after lunch.

For lunch all eleven of us (Jill and me and our kids (that’s 8), plus our 2 babysitters, plus Jill’s mom) went to Blue Moose pizza.  It was kind of crazy, but fun.  The actual *crazy* part was when we took all the kids in their ski gear to the bathroom!!

Here are Abby, Kate J. and Kate B. at lunch.   Poor Kate J. had gotten really windburned on her chin the day before and could hardly smile.

Luke was showing Alex how to draw missiles and Star Wars guys.

After lunch, we rode up mountain on the gondola to meet up with John and Jeff.

We took some pictures.  The kids were not into it, as you can tell.

Cassie and Claire, our most excellent babysitters.

What the heck??!

Spring Break in Vail Part 2

So on our first day of skiing, the kids went to all day ski school.  John skied some green runs with me, and then we met up with Jeff and Jill for lunch at the base.  The weather was so beautiful we were able to sit outside and watch the skiers while we ate.  After lunch, I went to the grocery store and John and Jeff skied some mogul-y blacks (no thank you!).  That evening we went to dinner at Bol in Vail Village (it’s pronounced Bowl), but decided not to bowl at the last minute because we were all exhausted.  We opted for ice cream and bed instead!

On our second day of skiing, Abby and Alex went to all day ski school and we checked Kate out of school at lunch so she could ski with John.  She got moved up to Level 2 (they start at zero) in ski school a little too prematurely (at least I think so), and was really scared to go on the lift.  So John took her skiing for the afternoon and she did the lift just fine.

John and I skied with Jill and Jeff all morning.  I only took one picture this day because I was just trying to keep up! The Bells were so sweet to ski greens with me, and Jeff even showed us how we could ski green/blue greens all the way down from the top of the mountain.  It’s beautiful up there!  After lunch, Jill and I went shopping for the afternoon in Vail Village.   We met up with some Fayetteville friends for dinner at Sweet Basil later that night.

Our super sweet babysitters, Cassie and Claire, took the kids on a gondola ride and then out for ice cream after dinner.  I think they all had a great time!  It was Alex’s first time up, since his ski school was at the base (the girls had ski school at the top).

On our third day, John and I skied by ourselves all morning.  It was so fun!  Since the last time I skied, several things have changed.  First, everyone wears helmets.  Second, you can text and tweet from 11,000 feet.  I am not kidding that John was working at the top of the mountain!

Riding the chair lift. It was really cold up there!

After lunch, we picked up Abby from ski school and she decided she wanted to go all the way down the mountain.  We watched Kate in ski school for a bit and then we headed down!

Kate is right in the middle here, with black pants and a pink coat.

After all that skiing, little Abby was sooo tired, but not too tired to head to the hot tub with John and Jeff and all the kids!  The grown ups went to another fabulous dinner that night at Kelly Liken. The kids all watched movies in our room after we left and had cookies. I don’t think they even finished the movie, though. Skiing really wears you out!

Spring Break Skiing-Part 1

We were delayed leaving XNA on Sunday afternoon (we sat on the runway for 3 hours, but that’s a whole different story), so we made it to Denver just in time to drive up the mountain WITH the huge snowstorm.  The higher the elevation got, the worse the roads got and the more wrecks we saw.  Our sweet mini van handled the roads perfectly!  When we passed through the Eisenhower tunnel, it was completely dark and everything was covered in snow.  It was beautiful! We were thankful to have a airport shuttle van in front of us, so we just followed that van all the way to Vail with no problems.

We got all checked in and then explored our condo. Um, it’s 2 stories with a separate living room upstairs with 3 bedrooms. I took this picture the next morning.  It’s the main living room. Can I move in, please?

The master bedroom and bath is on the lower floor.  Here’s the view from my bedroom. Please let me stay. The floors have radiant heat..

So the next morning, we got up bright and early to get the kids to ski school.  They had to get fitted for equipment, so we had to be early.

We met up with the Bells and took the shuttle to the Lionshead base (about 2 minutes).  The place we’re staying has somebody who carries all your equipment, so all you have to do is walk about 300 feet, grab your skis, and go. Again, please I don’t want to go home!

Abby, Kate B, and Kate J. ready to go!

Abby and Luke ready to get started!