Day +1027: Ski Trip

The family went to Washington for a ski trip last weekend. We left on Thursday morning, spent Thursday night with Teri and the kids in Lake Stevens, then headed to Wenatchee and on up to Winthrop on Friday. We stayed in a condo in Winthrop with Mom, Dad, Kari, Steve and Carmen and got some skiing in on Saturday and Sunday. Everyone had a great time. Mina and Isaac know Carmen well enough by now that they're all pretty comfortable with each other. In fact, their relationship is more like siblings than like friends. Carmen is just enough older that Mina thinks she's really cool and wants to play with her all the time. Part of that is just because of Mina's personality; she really really wants to be everyone's friend. Carmen enjoys playing with Mina some of the time, but needs her space some of the time too and Mina doesn't understand that, especially when she's tired. So there were some hurt feelings when Carmen didn't want to sit next to Mina at the dinner table, but they also played a lot together and enjoyed each other's company. They rode together in Kari and Steve's car all weekend.

Isaac is a bit oblivious to it. He played happily with Mina and Carmen some of the time, and it's actually pretty amazing that they could all play together considering that Carmen is nearly four years older than Isaac. I've never seen him get his feelings hurt, though. He might be too young. Isaac was psyched to ride by himself in Grandma and Grandpa's car all weekend. He seemed to look forward to the time away from the other kids, and maybe even from Keri and me. He rode with them from Winthrop to Wenatchee on Monday, and Mom said he talked nonstop the whole two-hour drive.

The kids like the snow. Mina and Isaac both did some skiing this year, Mina more than Isaac. Not a lot, but hopefully enough that she had a positive experience with it. The first day was a bit tough -- Mina likes skiing with Kari (she remembers last year when they were "fast girls!"), but Kari had to ski ahead with Carmen and Steve and Mina kind of had a meltdown. After we got some lunch in her and Daddy came along, we finally got her back on her skis and she skiied for a half mile or so while I pulled Isaac in the pulk. Isaac skied about 50 yards before he wanted to get in the pulk, but later on he wanted back out again and skied for 100 yards or so. The second day Isaac skiied less -- only about 25 yards -- but Mina skiied more. She also was able to hold on to a tow rope that Grandma Judy had rigged up and was able to be towed along for quite a while. The groomed cross-country trails have nice little tracks that kept her skis going in the right direction, and she was able to keep her balance pretty well, only falling a couple of times. After a while she got tired, but Grandma had also brought along a little plastic toboggan so Mina was able to lie down in that while Grandma towed her. Isaac must have been tired the second day because he wanted to get in the pulk pretty much right away, and after he had been in it for 20 minutes or so, I looked back and he had turned over and was curled up and drifting off to sleep. He ended up sleeping for an hour and a half. They did some playing in the snow while we were back at the cabin too. We tried to get them interested in sledding, and Carmen liked it, but Mina and Isaac were having too much fun just sitting in the snow, playing with it, eating it, etc.

In other news, we got a new bed at our house. This is something that has been long in coming. Isaac got used to sleeping with Keri when Mina was in the hospital, and Mina got used to sleeping with me in the hospital bed. We wanted to keep things the same when Mina came home, so she and I slept on an aerobed while Keri and Isaac slept in our queen-sized bed. Eventually we began to worry about polyvinyl chloride fumes from the aerobed, but we didn't have another bed so we moved Mina to the queen bed while I moved to the couch. Luckily we have a very comfortable couch, so I didn't mind so much, but Keri was having a hard time getting much sleep sandwiched between the two kids. We finally got a king-sized bed and moved the queen bed into the kids' room, and the kids have been sleeping by themselves for the past few weeks. It's nice to have a new bed! And the kids seem to be adjusting pretty well, though they sometimes wake up and want to come into our bed. It was a big, exciting moment in our house when the bed arrived, too. We first had to take down Mina's "big girl bed" -- the crib that she hadn't ever slept in much. She was a bit sad about that, but she got over it quickly. We also took our computer desk out of the back room, so they have a lot more room to play back there. We'll eventually want to get them twin beds, probably bunk beds, but for now they seem to enjoy sleeping together. It definitely helps Isaac to have someone there next to him. He's pretty much slept next to Keri all his life until now.