Saturday, February 23, 2019

Jay Peak, VT

Spending a weekend at Jay Peak is becoming a tradition for us.  When the winter set in, the kids started asking if we were going to Jay Peak again this year.  This year we headed out early to beat the rush hour traffic making our drive 2 hours less! 
 While Micah & Victoria attended ski school, Izzy attended John school.  John was on the ski team in college.  This added to his teaching abilities makes him a patient ski instructor which is what Izzy needed.  The first half hour was typical anxious Izzy including a few tears... "I'm not good at this", "Why am I doing this", "You're better than I am", etc...  John took her to an open, flat area to work on her skills.  In the midst of her lesson, she then announced "Wanna race to the bottom?" with John then taking off after her.  The rest of the time John and Izzy enjoyed green and blue courses.  They even "got lost" at one point.  At the end of the day Izzy had a blast and is ready to do it over again.

 Victoria's main enjoyment with skiing is being called my Snow Bunny.  Regardless, she does pretty good but is certainly not a daring skier.
 Micah did well enough this year to be solo with his own instructor.  He'll be on the regular slopes before Victoria.
 While Micah and Victoria were at Ski School, I attended Snow Boarding School.  There were a total of 7 adults including me.  I even road the magic carpet up with Micah once.  So fun and humbling to be in the same area as kids.  They are fearless learners while adults are timid.  That shows in how quickly they can attains skinning/snowboarding skills.  I very much enjoyed snow boarding and would do it again.  It was much kinder on my knee than skiing and more protective being on the board together with me other knee.


The highlight at Jay Peak continues to be their phenomenal water park.  We are going to try and convince Oma to join us a some point as the lazy river here is amazing.  I don't think we would be able to get her out of the river at the end of the day! 
 Micah's favorite again this year was the Flow Rider.  The instructor was assertively encouraging which was helpful for everyone.


 He even went out with Izzy to help her learn how the kneel on the board.






Izzy was daring and did La Chute (red slide) with John.  La Chute stands 65' in the air, drops you with speeds reaching 45 miles/hour and a full 360 degree rotation.  All this in 6 seconds.  She was quick in saying she wasn't going to do this again in the near future.

Another year wrapped up at Jay Peak!




Thursday, February 14, 2019

Happy Valentine's Day

 It was requested by school that Valentine's not be candy or food.  To the drawing board we went this past weekend to come up with non-edible Valentine's.  The girls decided to make their own crayons.  What an adventure this turned out to be.  Nearly 200 crayons required unwrapping and broken into smaller pieces.  We then filled hear shaped silicon molds and melted them in the oven.  This process was repeated until we have ~50 heart crayons.  In addition they made smaller crown and heart crayons to add to the bigger ones.
 So many colors!
 While the girls and I were busy making crayons, John and Micah created his Matchbox car Valentine's.  In the lot was one motorcycle which he coveted hoping he had extras left over to keep for himself.
 Our finished crayons.  I loved so many of the color combinations the girls came up with.
 Making Valentine's can be exhausting.  We needed a break!
 This was Micah's favorite crayon as it reminded him of camouflage.
 School Valentine's are completed!  We then discovered that several students in each class ignored the no food/treat request and handed out candy.  Nice to see some things never change.
 We the finished celebrating with a Valentine themed dinner thanks to John's creative side.  The finishing piece was individual cake pops.  Yummy!

Halfway Day

 Another fun school milestone is halfway day.  This is the halfway point of the school year.  Kids are encouraged to dress representing the theme "halfway".  In order to do so, they pay a fee; 50 cents which is then donated to the local "halfway house".  The kids enjoy watching their halfway day outfits come to life.  The finishing touches include different shoes and colored hair.