i am the luckiest

we finally got to go sledding! lack of sufficient snow, sickness, scheduling… all have kept us away from the hills. but last weekend, just in time to wrap up our Christmas break, our good friends, the reese family, called us up and invited us to join them. i sat in the car while ziya slept for the first while, and i had a book i was supposed to be reading. however, it was just too entertaining to watch my husband and boys go down the hill time after time. the expressions on their faces were priceless. good wholesome fun! i wished i had one of those cameras with a powerful zoom and a continuous snap so i could capture some of their fun.

i did finally get to my book, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith and i was feeling very grateful for a Heavenly Father who still speaks to prophets. i was also listening to some music (a song called the luckiest by ben folds five [thanks becca!]), catching glances of jacob and the boys sledding, and listening to ziya's soft breathing. then to top it all off, two eagles playing with each other flew just over where jacob and the boys were sledding. i looked around at the beautiful snow, the trees, the playful eagles, my healthy fun family, a book containing gospel truths in my hands... and i truly did feel like the luckiest. it was a great moment. (not to say that i don't always feel lucky because i do... this was just one of those a-ha moments)

ziya finally woke up and we took her out to play in the snow for her first time. she wasn't sure what to think... but i did catch several smiles on her face. she just went down the gradual part of the slope. i was able to take a little video of it. what a great way to end our Christmas break.

our new year celebrating...tiny apartment and sick kids

our first week of having jacob home for Christmas vacation was great. Christmas was great. then saturday night ammon and abe got really bad coughs. by monday, ziya had one, too. we had some fun invitations for new year's eve, but we had to stay home so as not to share all of our lovely germs. we still had fun, though. we watched movies (underdog is a huge hit with our boys! thanks little grandma!), had a special dessert, and almost made it to midnight. on new year's day, we stayed in our pajamas until about 4 p.m. we just played and played and played. we really wanted to go out and sled, but all three kids were just coughing too much. jacob and i both felt like we had to make it up to our kids (they'd been so psyched about going out to our friends' cabin to be with a bunch of their friends and play in the snow and now we were making them stay cooped up inside our tiny little apartment instead). so we built a fort in their room, had a family battle with some really cool ball shooters that we got for Christmas and then made and ate caramel covered apples while sitting in the fort. it was sooo much fun. we didn't get very good pictures of the fort, but i'm including some pictures of the candy apples.

that about covers it for our new year's celebrating! we were then on to our fourth day of staying inside! lots of hanging out in pajamas and lots of sleeping... like this.


talk about bouncing off the walls??? how about jumping off the couch? usually this is strictly prohibited, but we made an exception. after all, we'd been inside for how many days now?
today, i finally got fed up with being inside. i took the kids to the public library while jacob had basketball practice. one of the librarians kept giving us "the look" every time she heard one of the kids cough, but i just ignored her. she had no idea what i'd already lived through for about four days! (lest you think i'm a horrible mother, i honestly don't think my kids are contagious any more... they just sound like they are!) then we went to a cool little diner called sal's for dinner, hung out for about 1 1/2 hours at fred meyer and finally the highlight of the entire week... we went roller skating! much to our disappointment, they didn't have skates big enough to fit jacob (having a size 16 foot really stinks sometimes!), so while i fed ziya, he went out on the rink in just his shoes and did his best to teach our boys to roller skate. what an adventure. it really is a miracle that we made it through the evening without any broken bones. the coolest part of the evening is that we had the entire rink to ourselves (i guess roller skating just isn't a cool thing to do on a thursday night?). i was extremely nervous about trying it because of my weak ankle, but i got restless and finally convinced myself that an empty rink really was the time to try to skate again after at least 15 years of not having done it. whoa! i might have to sneak out on thursday nights from now on. talk about exhilarating! i absolutely loved it. i only fell once (ammon and i tripped on each other's skates) and i actually got going pretty fast! if we don't manage to do any more fun things during this two week break, at least i got to roller skate!!!

please pray for improved health for us!