Skiing
The best snow on Earth or something like that. We signed Ryan and Colin up for the local weekly lessons. You get four lessons, and an all mountain pass for each day for a really good price. They have both gotten really good on their boards and can pretty much keep up with me wherever I go. They did their first black diamonds this season! They also got 3 passes (one left to use) through the school system for $30 so they have gotten their fair share of boarding in this season.Mason and Jack have also started this season. Mason has taken 3 lessons and did his first blue yesterday up on the big hill. He has actually been really tough up on the mountain and is really enjoying himself. Jackson has a ski harness and goes down in front of me. He wears the biggest grin as he goes down the mountain and elicits waves from everyone who sees him. Yesterday we went up with our neighbors the Anderson's and had a bbq with them in the parking lot.
Disneyland / Universal
We made our pilgrimage down to Southern California and missed our usual layover in Vegas with Karla and John. We stayed in St. George instead. Since we were missing church, we stopped over and spent some time at the St. George visitor center. We did the family theater presentation and the kids really liked that. The temple and weather were gorgeous.We did three days at Disney, and one day at Universal. On our last day we did a character breakfast, the rainforest cafe and watched the lego movie. Mason LOVED both Star Tours and Space Mountain. He loved to talk on and on about how the movie kept changing on the Star Tours ride and said that Space Mountain "was awesome." He still gets scared on some of the bigger stuff. He got freaked out on Indiana Jones and Return of the Mummy ride. At Universal Mason loved the transformers ride and really liked meeting Bumblebee. Mason got chosen to partipate in the "Jedi Training Academy" so that was really neat. (Ryan and Colin also got to participate back when they were 6) He got to go up on stage and fight Darth Vader. Jackson was really cute. He loved meeting all of the different characters and even wanted to meet Tow Mater twice. He was really bummed on the last day when he found out we weren't going back. Ryan and Colin just enjoyed doing everything and ditching a week of school (though homework when they got back was rough). I'm sure that they could fill you in on the highlights if they feel like it. I really enjoyed the Donkey Kong portion of the tram ride at Universal. It was intense. Christine had to cover Jack's eyes and I ended up covered in T-rex saliva. Very cool.
Life
Life in general has been good but busy. Ryan and Colin continue to enjoy spectrum at school. Their class wrote, produced and performed an opera in February. Ryan and Colin were 2 of the 4 accompanists and they did great! The opera was really well done and sounded like a neat experience to put together.
Outside of one school bus fight, Mason's school behavior has been exemplary. He still has a low frustration tolerance which is hampering his progression in reading, but overall we are grateful he is behaving for the teacher. He can do three digit addition but ask him to read "See Spot Run" and he'll be screaming for the next hour.
Jack of course is cute as always. He has such a mellow personality and is just all smiles all the time. We all love him. He thinks he is potty trained, but several times a day his pants just get wet somehow. Weird, huh. Hopefully he catches on soon.
Christine keeps doing what she does. Her dryer balls sell faster than we can send them in. We had 15000 delivered last week and have 15000 balls coming this week too. Its a good problem to have, but my do I have a lot of balls at my house. Her listing keeps alternating between the number one and two slot on amazon depending on whether or not we can keep them in stock. Her undersocks sales continue to climb and she recently did a professional photoshoot to better market them. I guess I'll be doing a new website this summer.
Hope all of you are doing well.
