Fur Rondy Fun

The weather cooperated super great with this year's Fur Rendezvous (our winter celebration) so we got to enjoy lots of Rondy fun, just like I did growing up!

The girls and I kicked off our Rondying with the sleddog races. I snuggled the girls up with some blankies and lunch in the back end of the Explorer and popped the back window open with the car backed up to the the track as the trail comes down a big hill on Cordova Street. It was the perfect vantage point for them and they had a blast eating lunch and cheering for the dog teams. Ella is really into dogs right now so she was just tickled to see all those puppies close up. She loved cheering, too, clapping her hands and shouting, "Yay! Puppies!" The next night Daddy joined us and we headed down to the parkstrip to watch the fireworks display.

The next week our family checked out the carnival downtown. Ella's still too little to ride any rides, but Sycely had a fun time on the giant slide, the flying vehicles, the train and of course, her all time favorite (which she rode twice) the carousel. She even played a carnival game, fishing for magnetic frogs and won a prize! (Eventually with me attempting to help her, which I'm not sure was ANY help at all!) The guy felt bad that it took us so long to catch a frog that he gave her a "big" prize, so she went home with a neon pink frog.

The girls and I checked out the snow sculptures downtown, too. Sycely really thought the giant baby was super cool and Ella, as predicted was pretty enamoured with the dog sculpture.

After the snow sculptures we headed over to the train depot to see the model train show. The girls really liked looking at all the details in the displays, like circus animals and fisherman at a lake. The girls both brought home souvenir train whistle/bubble blowers.

I, for one, am glad Anchorage has pulled together to keep Rondy alive. It's so fun to get to share all the fun things I did as a kid with my own kids!

Sledding Party

We took advantage of last month's warm weather and decided to host our first Wheeles Family Sledding Party in the new house! We stocked up on hot chocolate, apple cider and s'more fixins and invited our friends for a fun winter playdate of backyard sledding and trying out our back deck fireplace. And the best part was, no one drove more than 5 minutes to get to our house!

We were joined by Scott, Joanie and Avery Campbell. Scott went to school with us and now teaches right down the hall from Lem.

Sycely's BFF Scarlett and her family enjoyed the sledding (and s'more) fun, too! The girls had such a great time rolling around and trekking around in the snow together.

The Bouton family introduced their 1 year old son, Benjamin to the fun of Alaska winter living. I'm pretty sure that Dad, JB, may have been a sledding novice, too. Benjamin's mommy, Lea also went to school with us and is student teaching at Dimond this year and will be on staff full time next fall. Man, there's a lot of those Dimond alumni boomeranging to teach at good ol' DHS.

Of course our girls had a blast and were stoked to get to share their backyard sledding hill with their friends. Ella even made a few trips down the hill all on her own!

March Madness

The end of February/beginning of March brought dumping snow, warm sunshine, slushy roads and more dumping snow! What a whirlwind for us to keep up with. It seems we were switching up our outerwear every other day! Welcome to "spring" I guess. Lem's state Model United Nations conference went well and he seemed impressed by the performance of his students. Special Olympics Local Games went off without a hitch as well-hooray! Lem and I also got to go on a super special date to the Star Wars exhibit at the Museum. Apparently, in the "I grew up addicted to Star Wars" world, it's a pretty big deal so I figured tickets would make a good Valentine's Day present for Lem. We checked it out on a Tuesday afternoon which was great since there were literally about 10 other people in the whole museum. We encountered none of the excruciating lines and long waits everyone's been complaining about.


Ella had a check up this month as well. For a kid who eats non-stop with a ravishing appetite, she sure didn't gain any weight! She's still only 18 pounds and didn't have quite the growth spurt I was expecting. So, she's still riding rear facing in her car seat :( but we're hopeful that maybe, by the time she's 2 she can ride forward facing. So much for 20 pounds and 1 year! Despite the lack of, um, mass growth, she's sure not holding back in blossoming in other areas. She's got some pretty humorous phrases these days, "pushin' me" "hurtin' me"- generally when she is pulling on your leg or there is no one anywhere near her. "no thank you"- generally when you're asking her to do something she's not interested in complying with. Every morning starts with a request for "apple juice" and "fie-ya on" (fire on) so we can get our snuggling time started. Other fun words she's mastered: princesses, bakey-bug (ladybug), Dora soup, there it is among about a hundred others I can't even keep track of anymore. She's also decided that she's ready to use the potty. She's been telling me for a while when she needs her diaper changed, even bring me a diaper and trying to "pat pat" herself with a wipe (on the outside of her clothes) but now she's asking to go on the potty, too. I'm certainly not a fan of pushing it with potty training so we're totally on her time table and following her lead, but she has had a fair amount of success. She does go pretty much everytime she asks to go on the potty so that's a really great start.

Sycely is getting ready for her Spring recital at ballet school. Her class is doing a pink flamingo family dance and they are just so super cute. I can't wait for her to have the chance to perform on a real stage with a real, live, non-family audience. She sure is developing a flare for the dramatic, which I hope is no indication of what to expect from her teen years! She's producing about 15 drawings a day and recently started experimenting with oil pastels, one of her new faves. She's also been enjoying time with her friend, Scarlett. They do all kinds of girly things together, but their favorite is dressing up and being princesses. Lem and I also went to the Optional program open house at Sycely's potential school for next year. We have to apply for a zone exemption for her to attend there since it's not the school we're zoned for, so we won't know for sure where she's going until fall, but we're praying that she'll be able to get into Chinook so she can go through the open optional program and have the added benefit of being right next door to Daddy's school.

Spring Break was full, but not exactly busy. We had two visitors from Sycely's class-the class bunny and the stuffed husky, Elim. (More about our time with the foster bunny and the Elim project in their own blogs). We spent the first couple days of spring break down in Homer (more about that in its own blog, too), started our bathroom re-decorating project. So far we've got the new paint on the walls and have painted the door and window trim. We still need to get, cut, paint and affix the new floor trim. Lem and I got to go on one lunch date, too. Since Nanny and Papa were gone we didn't have our usual babysitters so we had Teacher Courtney (one of the student teachers from Sycely's school) come and watch the girls for a bit. Her and Sycely have developed quite the bond and Ella's been around her quite a bit too, so it went really well and they were all super comfortable with each other already-much easier than introducing a new stranger.

Special O State Games also happened during spring break. I got to go with my team to opening ceremonies which was pretty neat. It was pretty exciting to get to see hundreds of special athletes totally charged and ready to kick off their competitions. The competition itself went well (and quickly!) and I was so happy with how everyone skated. They all worked so hard this year to learn new programs and I had 4 athletes skating at new levels this season, too, so they had new compulsories to master, too. Everyone really enjoyed the season and the team gave me a beautiful pink pashmina as a gift.