Big News

Free time???

This is definitely the worst blogging streak ever.  Is anybody still out there??  Oh well.  Here are the boys' first day of school pictures.

Zach started 2nd grade on his 7th birthday.  He was pretty excited about that.  I'm glad we're still in the "I'm happy to be starting school on my birthday" phase.  I'm guessing it won't always seem so fun...  We took in donuts at the end of the day and it was fun to see him in his new classroom.  I love that he loves school and am relieved that he is doing well, despite being one of the youngest kids in his grade.  This summer his reading really took off (and his LOVE of reading) and he read 28 chapter books on his own!  Craziness.  These are not short super beginner books either, they were 150-250 pages each.  That's my boy!

 Happy to see some buddies in the first day of school chaos outside his classroom.

The next day Austin started preschool.  He goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for about 3.5 hours.  The preschool is actually at my gym so I get to get some exercise after I drop him off.  Not a bad deal, right?  The program is great, and they even have Spanish class and music class among other fun things.  He marched right in and has loved it so far!   I felt a little anxious like I was forgetting him when I drove away, but am thankful that he was so excited about it and I didn't even cry.  :)  When he gets to school he is supposed to take out his snack, water bottle, and lunchbox and put them in certain places.  He always looks so proud about doing this by himself.  I think he really feels like a big boy.

Quick to make friends with the other 3 boys.

And now, for the first time in over 7 years I have this weird thing called FREE TIME.  Personal time.  Do whatever I want or do nothing at all guilt free time.  It is kind of a strange sensation, but I must say I am adapting nicely.

Spring Break

I've been such a slacker on the blog lately... There are a million things I could blog about, but of all of them spring break sounds like the most fun.

Like last year, we took a trip to Moab.  We decided to go the first half of spring break, so we would have some time to just relax at home before jumping back into the school routine.  We left Friday after school and drove as far as Glenwood Springs, where we stayed the night.  The big hot springs pool there is always fun, so we went swimming the next morning.  It was kind of rainy and chilly, but nice in the water.  

Wrinkly pool hands.

After the pool we finished the drive to Moab.  It was late afternoon as we arrived, so we headed straight into Arches before going to our hotel to get in a quick hike.  We hiked Park Avenue and it was such a beautiful time of day to be there!  It was glowing and peaceful and a fun hike.

Zach loved the rock cairns and put an extra rock on many of them on this trail.

The trail was perfect:  2 miles with lots of open rock that was safe for the boys to run on and explore.

My favorite picture of the trip:

Ski Days

I realized that I never posted anything about our skiing this year, and wanted to before I forget everything...

After Christmas we headed to Reno for a week to spend some time with the whole Smith family.  I grumbled a lot about hauling all of our ski stuff on the plane with us, but I'm glad we did.  The whole Smith clan got to ski together, minus Calli who was on baby duty at the bottom.  Here we are at Mt. Rose.  Oz did pretty well, but didn't last too long and was happy to go play with Grandma at the bottom after awhile.  Zach was a trouper and skied everything the rest of us did.  That being said, the snow was no good and not much was open at the time.  But he was fearless of going to the top and did a great job!

Love family ski days!!

Zach improved tons this year and skied some pretty steep stuff without trouble.  He got a lot more confident in his turns and didn't hesitate.

We also went up to Winter Park with my parents for a long weekend.  The snow was amazing and we had a great time!

Super Bowl Sunday.  We faithfully all wore Broncos shirts while we skied.  Too bad it didn't help...

My parents and I took Zach up one of the days when Austin and Cal stayed at the condo.  We made the mistake of getting into some intermediate terrain that was simply not steep enough to keep speed up.  So we ended up doing a ton of pushing ourselves with our poles and pulling Zach.  He didn't seem to mind, but it was an extra workout for us!  Finally we found a better area that was steeper more skiable.  Zach liked going fast, and most of all finding every possible tree trail and jump.  He loved it!

Some of the tree trails ended up getting stuck in the (fabulous) powder.

The boys were so excited about skiing that they had their skis on in the parking lot.

Oz loved going fast, and improved skiing on his own, but still loved skiing between our legs best.  He's got great balance, but it's a lot of work for those little legs!

A few precious days in paradise

At the end of February Cal and I spent some frequent flier miles and jetted off to Cal's favorite place- Mexico.  My parents graciously watched the boys for us and we took 5 days and headed to Cozumel.  It was so nice to fly directly to Cozumel and not have to travel far once we got there.  We stayed in a fantastic resort outside of the main town.  We had an awesome room that was not directly on the beach, but so so close.  

Testing the water the afternoon we arrived.

Gotta love the guy in the background...

Since we were on the west side of the island we were able to enjoy a couple of gorgeous sunsets.

We ate all of our meals at the resort, most sitting in this exact spot.  Not bad.

We thought about going in to town to eat, but by the time we paid for a taxi it was going to cost us more.  And really, how can you compete with this?

The "inside" walk to our room.

Cozumel is known for its amazing scuba diving, but I'm not certified so we stuck with snorkeling.  There was great snorkeling right at our resort so we went out often.  There were 3 piers with stairs going into the water that made it so easy.  Beautiful water, coral, and lots of fish!

Since we were in a single story area, we had a nice patio with a hammock, and lots of iguana friends.

One day we took a snorkel cruise and went to a few areas of the reef that are supposed to be some of the best in the world.  The pictures don't show much, but it was spectacular.

You can get a little bit of the feel for how big the reef is by this diver.

Snorkel pictures are always flattering.  :)

We called this Iguana Alley, because every time we walked down this path to the beach we passed at least 2 or 3 iguanas.

We headed into town for about an hour one afternoon just to check it out.  The main area was very touristy, but we wandered off the beaten path a bit and saw some of the real town.  I didn't take my camera on the trip, but took a few phone pics.  I really missed having my camera on this vacation, but was also glad to not be lugging it around or worrying about it.

It was a quick, much needed, fun, relaxing trip.