I wanted to post a few more skiing photos. Juan had his third lesson today and is liking it so much. John and I are taking turns each week skiing and hanging out in the snow with Mary Lu. She is so anxious to get going herself. Today she spent a long time lying on my instructors snowboard. I took a snowboarding lesson today and it was so much fun! I was falling a lot and basically out of control until she had me turn around and board "toe edge" instead of "heel edge". Then it went a lot more smoothly. Juan started learning how to turn today and last week he started snowplowing. We were going to take a hiatus from the lessons and just take him ourselves, but the more I think about it, the more I think we should just continue the lessons for the rest of this year (which will be a month at the most, maybe less than that, some guy was going around filling in holes in the snow with a shovel today). I mean, I don't know that either John or I should be teaching Juan how to ski and he's doing so well I would sort of hate to blow it. Next year he can go to ski school if he wants to.
Mary Lu is talking and having tantrums. I am such a pushover that I'm pretty sure if we have any more children he/she will have me wrapped around their finger instantly. Mary Lu is just so cute and she has tantrums and they are so cute (I know how annoying this sounds, just relaying what goes on in my head) that I pretty much just give in. No, Mary Lu, you can't have the pepper (she likes to play with spices but has now learned how to open them so I "stopped" giving them to her), Mary Lu has a tantrum, lays on her back on floor (very carefully and slowly she lowers herself down) and cries real tears and often yells what I can only assume are obscenities at me without even pausing for breath, and then I think she' s cute and I give her the pepper, she spills it out all over the floor and we're out of pepper. She also eats crayons and is coloring all over our house. "Of course she does" you're all saying, but Juan never did this so it is new to me. We've always kept his art supplies out for his leisure but now we talking of Latched Art Cabinets and such.
John is enjoying his job. He hikes around in the woods in the middle of the freezing cold night which I think is totally crazy. He's going to Florida for a week for work and will get to have lots of sleeping and lounging in his hotel room and I'm totally jealous. I suppose after the kids are all raised I can have a Sleep Day. I had one of these after my first trip to Ireland which involved some crazy 42 hour travel day on the way home (because I was trying to milk every last minute out of the trip) involving a bus across Ireland, a ferry to Wales, a midnight train across Wales, a tube across London. . .wrong stop. . .taxi to the airport, airplane home and an awesome sleep day. I thought I was tired then! If you ever get the chance, there is a ferry that travels from Swansea, Wales to Cork overnight that is pretty fun. You have to scramble for sleeping spots on benches or spread across chairs in the pub, etc. I guess these days we would have to get a cabin with the kids. Maybe not when they're older. It was awesome, I had to share a bench with another girl because we grabbed it at the same time. I can't wait to do all that stuff with the kids.
