It ain't Colorado, but it was a good time.

We had so much snow this winter that we headed out to Mt. Crescent a couple times last month. It seems a bit of an exaggeration to call it a mountain, but it was perfect for us. All the fun of the bunny slopes in Colorado (where I spend all my time anyway) with a nice 20 minute drive instead of 10 hours. We all had a blast.
Paul and Adam trying to get it all figured out. Paul LOVED snowboarding and got to be crazy good. He was pestering Dave to do the Black Diamond runs. He knew better than to even ask wimpy me!

Adam seemed like a natural right off the bat on a snowboard. The second time we went he wanted to skiing instead. He was absolutely crazy on skis. He went straight down, whizzing by Dave and I. He told us he wants to be an olympic skier. Hmmm. Don't think too many come from Iowa, but dream big little boy!

Dave had heard that boarding was easier than skiing so he wanted to give it a try. After a couple runs down the slops he was dripping sweat and went and traded back in for skis. Can't say that I blame him. But props for giving it a go!

Noah didn't want to ski, but managed to have some fun anyway! Cute boy.

Walking Baby Jude

This is a video of baby Jude walking. He started at 9 months! Too many big brothers to keep up with, I guess. This one was taken after he had practically become a pro. Now he is unstoppable and really only bothers to crawl when he chases Smokey under the bed.

Gotta love the orange socks!

My Kitchen Counter

Ok. I am bizarrely excited about this one. I cleaned off my kitchen junk counter. I mean cleaned it OFF. It was stacked with every 'important' paper from the past three years, at least. Well, it turns out that after three years, very few things are still important. So, hello recycling bin! This may not seem like a significant post, but honestly, this is monumental and must be documented.

In fact. I'm gonna take a picture of it right now.

Destination Imagination Champs!!

Saturday Paul, Adam, and I went to Carroll, IA for the regional competition of DI. They are on a team with four other kids from church; Jet and Wynn Keller, Thomas Cruise and Carmen Long. I can't believe I didn't bring a camera... I always bring a camera.

There were a lot of surprises for the day. There was a mix up with the structure, theirs didn't have a big enough hole in the center. All the props had to fit in our container... they didn't, so we had to lose some. It took way longer to put on the newspaper costumes than expected. The best surprise of the day was that Team DInamite won 1st Place and is headed to STATE!!

They acted out a newspaper story about a soccer game and then did a fishing skit and finished up talking about the winter olympics. Then in the afternoon there was an instant challenge where they had 5 minutes to build something then 2 minutes to present a skit.

It's just awesome because the kids really had to do all the work. They came up with the idea, did the work, did the research and memorized their parts. I am so proud of them and can't wait to go to Ames on April 10th!!