It's about time.

 After months and months of begging,
Alicia has finally gotten her own room. 

 

Now she wants to paint it a bright yellow or orange. 
We'll get around to that one of these days. 

On another note, the girls have been enjoying Hera.  Natalie sat like this for a good 30 minutes yesterday.

We Want to Welcome Hera to the Family

 We have another addition to the family.  Yes, it's a girl.  

You expected anything else?

John and Kimberly trapped this kestrel on Sunday up in Perry.  Remember that addition John has been adding to the bird mew?  Now it has an official owner.

It's actually Kimberly's bird, with John helping out.  

Kimberly got to name her, and sticking with the Greek God/Goddess theme we've gone with all of the birds, she went with Hera, Zeus' wife.

Kimberly has also been the one training her and teaching her to eat from her glove.  

She had to be very patient, but finally Hera ate on day after she was caught.

So far, she is happily sitting in our warm living room while she learns to adapt to being around people.  Little does she know, she's headed out to her new home as soon as the temperatures get back into the teens at night.

Don't think she is all nice and cuddly to pet.  That beak of hers can do some serious damage, not to mention those claws she has.  You notice both John and Kimberly are wearing gloves when they hold her.

In case you are wondering, Rhea and Hera do not get along.  When they see each other, they are none to pleased with each other, voicing their screeches accordingly.

A little of This and a little of That.

Some snippets from our last week include Alicia's first ballroom dancing competition.  She has been going early before school for the last three months, and I've often caught her practicing her dances in the kitchen.  So fun to see her dancing with her friends.

She's the one right in the middle -
 second one over from the right.

   Here she is the one on the far right.

Sorry, I know the picture below is blurry, but I loved that Natalie and Megan joined in on the dancing fun behind the scenes. 

Changing gears a bit - last week we had a massive snow storm that swept through and dumped nearly two feet of snow.  They cancelled school, a first for us in all the years our girls have been attending school here.  

Trust me when I say they were fabulous at getting the word out.  At 6 a.m. we not only got a call from the district on our home phone, but on John's and my cell phone, not to mention the emails we both had in our accounts.  Being that it is such an unprecedented event to cancel school around here, I guess they figured we weren't getting up to listen to the radio to check on the school day's status.  I certainly wasn't planning too.  We were just going to huff it over to school on foot - given that the school is only a half mile away, if that. 

So what did we do on a no-school snow day?  We made homemade ice-cream of course.  That is, we did so after spending most of the morning shoveling ourselves out and sledding on the neighbors driveway.  It was quite the party with all of my neighbors out as we chatted and drank hot chocolate provided by my lovely neighbor. 

 P.S.  If you're wondering how to make homemade snow, you get a nice-sized bowl of fresh snow (Natalie just put two bowls outside as the snow was falling, and waited for it to be full), then you add about a cup of milk, a smidgen of vanilla, some sugar - I think it was about 1/4 cup, and whatever additions you want, like m&ms, chocolate chips, or marshmallows.  Tasty.


On another note, we spent time up at John's folks for Sunday dinner, and as you can see, the cousins LOVE their Uncle Kevin.  

 They even love playing with all the dress ups.  It was quite cute watching Megan try to stand, not to mention the walking part of things in these high heeled babies.  Good thing she's starting young.  I didn't learn how to walk in heels until well into my married years.

And lastly, Kimberly, Alicia and I made it up skiing on Saturday in the frigid-cold, 2-degree weather, but let me tell you, all of that fresh snow made skiing absolutely incredible!!  I didn't even mind my nose hairs freezing in place.  Not one bit.

Good thing Alicia was doing well enough in her skiing that we were able to advance to the gondola rather than riding up on the ski lifts in the biting cold. 

High on the Mountaintop

Alicia got to join Kimberly and I skiing this year up at Snowbasin.  She picked up on the beginner moves rather quickly, and we all had a blast.  Alicia claimed she wasn't interested in skiing, so I convinced her to at least take her lessons for the month of January and if she still didn't like it, she wouldn't have to do it again.  As I suspected, she was hooked and didn't want to wait a week before her next skiing adventure.

Some adventures from the day included discovering Alicia had two left ski boots.  How did we not notice that for the two years Kimberly was skiing?  Thankfully, the ski warehouse we bought them from (we got some seriously good deals buying all used equipment) was more than happy to fix the error, and now Alicia has a right AND a left boot.

I also erroneously lost my driver's license sometime during the day.  Not cool.  I now have a replacement one until the official one arrives.

Snowbasin also learned that I am a very honest woman.  They accidentally gave Alicia and Kimberly season pass tickets instead of the tickets that were only good on their lesson days.  We could have had some serious ski time this year with those.  Fortunately for them, and my conscience, we turned them back in when I figured there had probably been a mistake.  

Lastly, poor Alicia fell off the ski lift as we were getting on the more advanced run for Alicia's first time on Saturday.  Unbeknownst to me, Kimberly's poles were on the seat, so Alicia had no where to sit and proceeded to fall onto the snow embankment just beyond the lift - albeit not a far one, but still, unsettling. I tried to catch her, but couldn't get to her in time.  Kimberly and I were stuck on the lift chair and couldn't get down to help her, so the kind lift operators got her onto the next chair so she could meet us at the top.  Thankfully she made it through unscathed and not too shaken up so she was able to enjoy the rest of the day, thank goodness. 

I have to thank my husband for supporting me in this somewhat pricey hobby.  Granted, I support him in his not-so-cheap bird hobby, so it's a win-win for both of us.  The memories the three of us are making together is truly worth every penny.  As many of you know, raising teens and preteens can be somewhat challenging, but up on the slopes, there was none of that - just pure joy, laughing and having fun together for the entire day with no arguing, sassiness, or general teenager grumpiness.  You can't put a price on that, and given all of the fond memories I can recall at a moments notice I had with my mom and siblings while skiing, it is worth every hard-saved penny for the sport - one of the few I'm good at and enjoy.

I can't wait until the younger girls are old enough to ski because John says he plans to join us on a snowboard.  I'm already counting down the years. 

Bring It On 2013

Happy New Year Everyone!!

 

 We continued our New Year's Eve tradition with Monopoly and lots of yummy treats.  Even Natalie joined the fun and games late into the night this year.  

Fun times indeed. 

P.S.  Natalie KILLED us.