March it up...

March is always a fun month.  Weather warms up and drys out.  Clare's birthday, Saint Patrick's day and our anniversary all makes for an eventful month.  Several months ago I bought a groupon for high tea.  I thought I could use it as a special birthday date for Clare.  I didn't check the timing and the groupon expired the first weekend of March...not May.  So the kids had a Friday off from school and I decided to try tea time?

It was a bit of a debacle getting to the tea shop.  I thought it was in a hotel but I was wrong.  We had a run around but made it to the tea shop eventually.  It turned out to be pretty fun.  We had a variety of little sandwiches and treats.  All of the kids loved the crumpets and chocolate covered strawberries the most.  It was a great adventure.  

The tea shop was in Japan town (too bad Lorien didn't go with us).  The building where the tea shop was had a theater and fashion shop.  Each floor was labeled...we got a kick out of the sign for the third floor...

March has also given us some crazy weather, freezing one day, rainy, windy, hail or sun.  Its been all over the place.  One Sunday we could see a storm brewing around Mount Diablo so we decided to go up and see if it was snowing up there.

Sure enough, there was snow on Diablo.  We even sat through a crazy hail storm while we waited in line to get into the park.  The kids rolled down all of the windows and enjoyed the absurdity of snow falling from the sky in California.

We parked and took a little hike.  My secret hope was that it would start snowing again while we were out in the weather.  Spoiler alert, I got my wish, but it was very genie like in its fulfillment.

Right as we were at the summit of our hike, the very end (or top of the mountain) and had the farthest to hike back to the car...the wind whipped up...the clouds rolled in...and painful bits of frozen water started stinging any exposed skin. We got a storm alright, a frozen hail/snow storm.  The wind was blowing and I was regretting my wish.  The kids thought it was the best moment of the day!

If you zoom in on that picture up there you can see how bonkers the weather was.  Behind the kids (down in the valley) it was sunny, green and calm.  Up on the Mountain it was windy and snowy.  You can see the snow being blown in every direction if you look at it against Wyatt's dark blue jacket.  You can see the dark clouds at the top of the picture showing the storm right over our heads.  It was totally bonkers.  Incidentally, Will used this very photo to kick off his board meeting three days later.  Just to show what he and his family had been up to that weekend.

Will and the kids had a snow ball fight on the top of the mountain.  Colter thought it was funny to throw some snow at me while I took pictures.

Oh hey, here is a zoomed in picture of that other one I told you to zoom in on up there.  See, bonkers weather, totally bonkers!

Where was Lorien for all of this?  She was on her school Orchestra field trip down at Disneyland.  She came home on the day we went up to Diablo.  She called us while we were on the mountain top to say she was at the high school and ready to be picked up.  I'll have to post a few pictures of her trip.  She had a great time.

February 2017...

Lets just get this over with.  I am so far behind, I think I'm first.  (I am actually writing this the weekend of Easter...in April).

February.  Plenty happened but mostly life just rolled along like usual.  We got our very last bit of Christmas finished...the measuring tree.  

 

 

Wyatt has been participating in Math Olympiad again this year.  Every Monday he usually goes over to his friend, Drew's, house or they come here.  They hang out, do homework, have a snack and go back down to the school for MO.  One day Colter left his Magic Tracks out.  Drew and Wyatt spent the whole afternoon making elaborate tracks.

Lorien's wrestling season is coming to a close.  She has worked so hard and had a lot of good experiences.  Lorien doesn't naturally devote herself to doing hard things.  She (like her mother) would rather take the easy path.  Wrestling has been such a challenge.  She has stuck with the whole season.  We are so proud of her!  Some of her friends came to cheer her on at one of her local tournaments in February.  It was so nice to have a few friends watching and supporting her.

Most of the kids have had a special blanket from the time they were babies.  Lorien and Wyatt out grew their blankets the soonest.  Clare and Adell stuck with theirs for a bit longer but I think Colter has been attached to his for the longest.  As a grown adult who still sleeps with her baby blankets (yes they came with me to college and on my honeymoon) I love this habit.  One night after a date with Will I went up to bed and couldn't find my baby blanket?  I looked all over my room and in my bed.  I couldn't figure out where it would be.  Finally, I thought to check with Colter.  Sure enough, he was wrapped up in his nokie blankie and my baby blankets!  Stinker.

California has been blessed with so much rain!  We are loving every drop.  All of the kids enjoy a good rainy day. Colter especially loves to jump in puddles and whoop it up in the rain.

My sister Jennifer moved from Maine to Utah on February 11th.  All of my Maine family was there to help her pack (as a snowstorm started blowing in) load up the U-haul and head west.  Christopher came out from Utah and drove with Jennifer.  I wish I could have been out there to help.  It was miraculous!

Valentine's Day happened.  Our family tradition is I stay up late and decorate the table with a pretty cloth and a few decorations.  Each kid gets a little gift and a box of chocolates.  They get to wake up to sugared cereal and their little presents.  It is a fun tradition.  Will and I don't put a lot of stock into the holiday for ourselves.  Restaurants are crowded and our anniversary is right around the corner.  We are content to stay in and be grateful for each other.  Although, three of our children were born in November so maybe Valentine's Day is more special because we stay in?

At some point in the regular hub-bub of the day, I stopped to eat lunch: ice cream, cookies, and some Advil.  Valentines at its finest.

Adell missed a bit of school with sickness.  On Adell's last day of sickness she got up and made her own bubble solution and created some gigantic bubbles with a pipe cleaner bubble wand.  

  This winter has been harder for coughs and colds at our house.  I blame preschool.  Colter goes to school Tuesday and by Friday morning he is coughing and has a runny nose.  I remember a friend complaining about the Tuesday cold after a Sunday in nursery.  I feel like I'm living that with preschool.  Colter missed the whole week of preschool over Valentines.  Luckily, his preschool teachers kept his bag of goodies for him to collect when he got back.  He was in heaven, so many lollipops!  As he read through all of the cards (OK, I read the cards and names) he would call out "Oh, she is my friend!" or "He's not very nice but he is good at making trucks." or "His name is actually Mega."  It was fun to peek into his preschool friendships.  I cannot believe this guy will be in Kindergarten in August.  (insert heart break emoji here)

February is talent show season around these parts.  Clare has participated in every talent show except for her Kindergarten year.  She LOVES the talent show.  This year she tried to get a group going but none of her friends were into it.  She decided to go out for MC.  She has great public speaking confidence and we were all sure she'd get a spot.  On try out day we learned there were four kids trying out.  Perfect, there are two shows and there are usually two kids who MC each show.  Clare had to get a spot. Well, for some reason...she did not.  Devastated doesn't even come close to describing how sad she was.  She cried all night.  Clare had tried out by herself and did a decent job.  It was hard to try out alone and she thought she did a good enough job to make the cut...and there were four kids trying out for four spots...no brainer.  I'm still not sure why she didn't make the cut?  Anyway, I picked her up on Friday and she burst into tears.  She did not get a MC spot!  She cried all weekend.  She cried to her siblings, she cried to her friends, she cried to her dad. Clare was sad.  I sent an email to the teacher who heads up the talent show just asking if Clare could have done something better to get a spot.  The teacher responded that Clare did an excellent job, she just didn't make the cut.

Monday I got an email from the same teacher.  Turns out, the MC jobs were given to three kids, a duo who wanted to do the 3rd-5th grade show and a single MC artist who wanted to do the Kindergarten-2nd grade show.  The single MC decided over the weekend, he would rather have a friend up there MCing with him.  Luckily, Clare and Carter were friends!  When Carter asked for a companion, the teachers thought of Clare.  She got called into the teacher's classroom and asked if she would consider MCing with Carter. She couldn't hide her happiness when she said "yes".  She told me later that she was grinning ear to ear as she made her way back to her classroom.  She ran into one of the other teachers who also run the talent show and who had been her 3rd grade teacher (Ms. Blackwell then...Mrs. Cummings now).  Mrs. Cummings asked "How ya doing Clare?" and Clare said "I'm great!" and jumped in the air.  She was over the moon.  I let her tell me the good news when she got home.  I was so happy for her!

She and Carter worked together to get a script together and make plans.  They decided to be Michael Jackson and Cindi Lauper.  They drove in to the show in a Deloren they borrowed from Marty McFly.  It was fun and funny.  The best part, Clare MCed the Kinder-2nd grade show that Adell had a skit in so we only had to go to one show!  Win-win!

Adell also kicked butt on her talent show act.  The theme was "The 80's".  Adell's group did a ribbon dance to True Colors.  We learn something every year when we do the talent show.  Which groups of kids work well together, which acts are easier to do, how the timing goes.  This year was no exception.  It was nice to have Clare MCing Adell's show.  As a 5th grader, this will be the last time Clare participates in the talent show.  It was bittersweet for sure.

I subbed Colter's primary class one Sunday.  I asked Will to come in an be a Prophet from the scriptures (King Benjamin).  The kid's faces as they watched him was so sweet.  They knew he was just a Dad but they were so entertained by his character.  It was cute.  I also learned that I have to remember a snack if I sub this class again.  I forgot...I knew they would be hungry by the third hour of church but I just didn't grab a snack on my way out.  The kids were disappointed but there wasn't much I could do.  At one point, one of the kids said to me "I hear Jesus telling me he wants you to give us a snack."  No guilt...too bad I had to ignore Jesus this time...

And that's a wrap on February.

Wrestling is for GIRLS!

That's right.  Lorien is wrestling this year.  She mentioned it in the fall and Will thought she had a crush on one of the boys on the team and so wanted to wrestle to hang out with him more.  Nope.  She just wanted to wrestle like her Dad. 

So, she attended the open mat nights in the fall and started on the team when the season started in November.  Will agreed to come help coach and they were off to the races...and by races I mean smelly wrestling rooms.

It has been so good for her.  She does not like to do hard things and wrestling is no exception.  But she persists and keeps on trying.  She lost every. single. match...but had some close ones.  She learned some lessons and got stronger.

When Will was in high school there were only a handful of girls in the whole state of Montana who wrestled.  When they would have a girl as their opponent some of Will's teammates would forfeit the match.  There was no glory in beating a girl and they weren't going to risk losing to one either.  Now, 20 plus years later, there are whole tournaments for girls.  There is almost always a girls bracket at every meet.  AND, my favorite thing by far, her team of boys is so supportive of her.  She is the only girl on the team.  We all sit on the stands together and when she is called up all the boys start tapping each other for attention.  They say "Hey, Lorien's up, let's go" and head over to her mat.  They stand on the sides in a big group and cheer her on.  I want to cry every time I hear "Hey, Lorien is up!" and watch them stand in mass.  It is great...better than great...awesome.

I am so proud of her.  Unfortunately, we didn't know she had to turn in a form by December 5th to get wrestling counted as a PE credit for this year.  Good thing she wants to wrestle again next season!

Lots of rain in our town means lots of snow in the mountains...

Oh merciful heavens, have we been getting pummeled with rain this winter.  It is awesome!  Every time it rains, it comes in buckets and the snowpack is growing like gangbusters.

For the first time in a long time, there is plenty of snow up in the mountains.  We were all so excited to make our annual pilgrimage out to the snow (for one whole day).  

It did not disappoint.  We found a great place to play and sled the very first year we went out to snow...like the very beginning of 2013?  It was out in the Stanislaus National Forest.  There are three roads that go through the forest and after the first trip, and with the drought, we couldn't remember where the great snow place was!  We tried all of the roads and this year we finally got the right one.  It was perfect.  We found a Snopark (where you pay to park and just play in the snow around the parking lot...in the middle of a forest) and spent the whole day.

The kids were over the moon happy.  Clare did a back flop into the snow as soon as we arrived...and back flopped onto a stick.  We learned that the depth of the snow was deceiving.  We found a few fun sled runs and had a blast.  We threw snowballs and built a snowman.  Colter stuck to the sidelines playing with his trucks.  We had snacks and water (thanks to about 15 trips back to the car by yours truly). 

It was such a fun trip.  Now we know where to go every time (Strawberry).

 As we were unearthing our bodies from layers of snow clothes, Lorien discovered a beautiful view out onto the valley.  The sun was streaming through the clouds and lighting all of the frozen trees in gold.  It was stunning!

Dinner at Applebees on the way home (where Colter whispered "I hate that guy's voice" about our waiter) and you've got yourself a successful snow day for the Andersons.

First hike of the New Year!

Ringing in the New Year with a family hike was a great idea.  We haven't hiked our local hills when they have been this green (thanks for all the rain!).

Our shoes got caked with mud.  California mud does not dilute with water and becomes the stickiest clay you can imagine.  All of our shoes grew a few sizes as we hiked.

We took the same trail we took on our very first hike in Danville.  Up to Las Trampas and up to Fort Anderson, a grove of trees you can see from all over the valley.  From Fort Anderson you can see the whole bay area.  It is beautiful!  We did not count on a storm blowing in as we hiked.  It got really cold and windy up at Fort Anderson and started raining as we hiked down.  Another memorable family hike in the books.