Ice Castles in Midway

We visited the Ice Castles in Midway over the weekend.  I have been wanting to go the past couple of years and we finally made it happen this year.  I'm so glad we did!  It was very cool and our kids had so much fun crawling through all the tunnels and going down the slides.  I didn't want to carry my big camera around all night so we only got a few phone pictures, which was okay too.  It was more of an "being in the moment" experience and it's not to feel the need to thoroughly document every second.  Other events that happened over the weekend: Peter finally started feeling better and had his last soccer game.  He got a medal that he was extremely excited about.  Also now Claire has decided she wants to play soccer the next round so she can get a medal. We got Costa Vida take out for lunch after soccer on Saturday before we went to the Ice Castles.  Sunday was a low key day at home catching up on reading and homework for me.  We played a few card games and watched the movie Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH since we finished listened to the audiobook.  The movie is MUCH creepier than I remember.  Hopefully I didn't traumatize our kids forever! 

Scenes from the Weekend: Valentine's Edition

For Valentine's Day this year we simplified a bit more than we have in year's past.  The past couple of years I've given the kids a book, treat, and pajamas.  This year they both have plenty of pajamas, and we have no more room on our bookshelves.  We have a good selection of Valentine books already and we like to still use the library frequently so we are only adding books on birthdays and Christmas this year.  We gave Claire and Peter each a box of skittles (their favorite!) and a card game.  We gave Claire Old Maid and Peter Go Fish.  We played both games a few times over the weekend and they were really fun.  Claire has loved playing games lately so they were a good choice!

On Friday Night, we made our traditional homemade heart pizzas for dinner. Claire and Peter both loved getting to put their own toppings on their pizzas and they ate their entire pizzas once they were cooked.  I made a BBQ Chicken Pizza for Bryce and I.  Bryce works nights Mon-Fri and doesn't get home until around 10 pm so Friday is usually pizza and movie night for me and the kids.  We bought Frozen 2 and watched that while we ate our pizza.  Our kids were so excited, they are huge Frozen 2 fans.  And Bryce was able to have pizza once he got home that night, and I managed to stay awake late enough to see him for a bit before we went to sleep.  

Saturday Peter had a soccer game, we played outside and cleaned up the yard a bit, and then we went for a hike near a local park with a short hiking trail.  The temperature was in the 40s so not too cold, and it was nice to spend time outside together!

Sunday Peter woke up with a fever, cough, and cold.  Poor kid was miserable (still is not feeling great).  We ate left over pizza for lunch, took naps, read to the kids a lot, played card games, and made loaded sweet potatoes for dinner.  It was a great weekend other than the sickness for Peter.  I am hoping he starts feeling better by this weekend and that the rest of can stay healthy! 

Minimalism & Simplifying

I've really been making a conscious effort of moving towards minimalism and intentional living the past couple of years.  I've read and loved many of the popular simplifying, decluttering and minimizing books including:

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

The Minimalist Home by Joshua Becker

The Joy of Less: A Minimalist Guide to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify by Francine Jay

Minimalism for Families by Zoe Kim

More than Enough by Miranda Anderson

Simple Happy Parenting by Denaye Barahona

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown 
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

I love everything about minimalism and simple living and have been really drawn to that lifestyle.  I've never been one who accumulated lots of clutter and I have always been a bit of a clean freak.  But all of these books and minimalist podcasts I've listened to over the past few years have contributed enormously to shifting my mindset.  It shifted my mindset about money, wealth, and goals for the future.  It emphasized the value of experiences over things.  It changed the way I shop, the way I go about gift giving, and helped me become more conscious and intentional about everything we bring into our home.  It even influenced me to choose more sustainable living options in a few areas.  I kon-mari'd our whole house and went through everything we owned.  I don't feel like we had that much stuff, definitely less than the average american family of 4 I think, but we still got rid of quite a bit! We minimized our kitchen, clothing, bathroom, toys, and even books (gasp, I know!).  The end result has been lovely.  I thoroughly enjoy the feeling of lightness and the breathing room a minimalist home leaves.  We've been able to do a lot of fun experiences with our kids this past year as we've shifted our values to emphasizing experiences together.  We also have a few trips planned for this year that we are really looking forward to!  

All of this is to say we are getting to a good place in our minimalist/simple living lifestyle.  I am in a class this semester for library school called: Information Retrieval System Design.  It's all about the different ways of organizing, storing, and retrieving information.  We had to post on a discussion board an organization system we had created so I shared my kids' closets and thought I'd go ahead and share my post here too.  

I recently reorganized my children's closets after deciding to get rid of their dressers.  Both my children had fairly large, heavy, wooden dressers in their closets. They don't have very many clothes so their dresser drawers were only half or even a quarter of the way filled. I felt like the dressers really weren't necessary and just taking up extra closet space. I got rid of the dressers and created a new organizational system in their closets. I put 4 baskets in each closet to store on the top shelf. One basket for tops, one for bottoms, one for socks and underclothing, and one for miscellaneous or off-season items. Dressers , dress shirts, bulky sweaters, and jackets hang in their closets . They also each have a hanging shelf with 6 cubbies. On Sunday nights I pull the baskets down from the top shelf and have my kids pick an outfit (shirt, bottom, socks, underclothing) and place an outfit in 5 of the cubbies on the hanging shelf. These are their outfits for the 5 days of school during the week. The bottom cubby in the hanging shelf is for pajamas. The items needed are easily found in their assigned baskets for refilling and the baskets are stored in a specific order on the shelf: from left to right; tops, bottoms, socks and underclothing, miscellaneous and off-season items. I organized their closets this way with a few goals and purposes in mind. The current system limits the number of items it can store, which means it helps control the amount of clothing I purchase or can have on hand at one time for each child. Another goal was to make access to outfits in the mornings as easy as possible for the user (my children). Each of my children have an outfit ready to select so they can dress for the day independently, and pajamas within reach in the bottom cubby so they can also change into those independently at the end of the day. We store shoes, coats, and backpacks on hangers in the entryway so I did not have to fit those into this system. So far, the system is working really well and I feel has been worth the effort. Having to only choose from 5 cubbies for an outfit rather than a whole closet has made the process of deciding what to wear and getting dressed much easier for my children. The only minor problem in the system is not having 7 outfits available for the whole week. Also if they happen to wear more than one outfit on some days from getting dirty they would run out of outfits by Friday. This isn't too big of an issue for me as it doesn't take much time to take down the baskets and restock two outfits but it is something my children (the users) can't currently do themselves.

20 for 2020 List

Following in the footsteps of Gretchen Rubin and her sister Elizabeth Craft from the Happier Podcast here is my 20 for 2020 list.  I love goals and lists so this was immensely satisfying to come up with!  This is a list of 20 goals/tasks I'd like to accomplish in 2020:

1.    Complete 3 more classes for master's degree
2.    Find & register Peter for new preschool next year
3.    Visit 3 National Parks (Capitol Reefe, Zion's, & Yellowstone)
4.    Visit Ice Castles in Midway
5.    Read to kids every day (ideally for 60 min. a day, but for at least 15 min.)
6.    Read for pleasure every day (for at least 15 min. this seems achievable even while
       working on my classes for library school)
7.    Make 2019 Photobook
8.    Take Family Trip to California + Disneyland
9.    Get some form of exercise 5 days a week
10.  Reach Savings Goal
11.  See a show at Tuacahn again in St. George 
12.  Renew passports and get kid passports for possible trip next year
13.  Take Fall Break Trip to Yellowstone
14.  Find perfect pair of dark skinny jeans
15.  Order & try out Hobonichi Techo Cousin Planner
16.  Parent + Kid dates: once in the summer and once during winter break
17.  Replace windshields on both vehicles 
18.  Sign Claire up for a kid's choir in the fall
19.  Sign both kids up for swimming lessons + summer camps
20.  Cook dinner at least 4 times a week and eat mostly plant based diet 

Scenes from the Weekend

We had a largely uneventful weekend, but in the best kind of way.  It was productive and I checked a lot of items off of my to do list.  The kids and I had pizza and a movie night on Friday night while Bryce was at work.  Bryce was on call over the weekend so he was at work for the majority of it.  Saturday morning, I took Claire and Peter to an open house for a preschool we were looking into for Peter next year.  I loved the school and the teacher so I pre-registered him and we should be able to pay is registration fee and have is spot secured this week for the next school year.  His class time will work much better with our work schedules and we can build in some overlap so three days a week I can work from 8-2 instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to work 6 am-12. I'm really looking forward to that next school year! Finding a spot in a good preschool seems to be an unnecessarily stressful burden of parenthood at this day and age, but at least we've found one.  It's a huge relief to have that figured out and checked off my list!

After the preschool open house we went to Peter's soccer game.  This was his first time really playing any kind of sport and he has loved it.  He is also quite competitive, something we did not know until his first game.  Bryce was able to make it to his game during a lull at work and we enjoyed watching him sprint back and forth with the mosh pit of 3 and 4 year olds on the court.   

 After the soccer game Bryce went back to work and we went home for a quick lunch then headed back out to run a few errands.  Our first stop was Target to pick up Valentine's for Claire and Peter to give to their classmates this week.  Then we stopped at the library to return and pick up books.  The kids played in the children's section after we picked out books and I got to read peacefully on my kindle for a few minutes.  After our library visit we went home, had dinner, read books, and the kids went to bed.  I read for about an hour and finished reading Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin (highly recommend, I binged it in about 2 days!) and then went to bed myself at a pretty reasonable hour (10:30 pm).  I have a tendency to want to stay up late on weekends but I feel so much better if I make myself go to bed early enough to still get around 8 hours of sleep.  Thankfully I wend to bed when I did because we were woken up at 1 am to the sound of our van alarm going off outside.  Normally we park our van in the garage but Bryce has been fixing a few things on our car in the garage so our van is currently parked in the driveway. Someone had tried to break in and open the van doors.  Luckily there is literally nothing in there but car seats and a few cds, but it was still unnerving knowing someone had tried to get into it.  

After that incident my restful night of sleep was ruined.  I couldn't fall back asleep until well after 3 am and then Peter woke up at 6:30 am needing to go to the bathroom, he usually sleeps in until around 7:30 so it was an early morning for him.  I took him to the bathroom

then Bryce got up with him so i could try to get a bit more sleep.    

The rest of our Sunday was pretty low key.  After a rough night of sleep and Bryce being on call not getting home until 12:30 a.m. we decided to stay home for the day.  Claire begged me to read from Caddie Woodlawn (our current family read aloud.)  We shoot for an hour of read aloud time every night (30 minutes of picture books and then 30+ minutes from whatever novel I am reading to the kids).  Often on the weekends we read in the mornings too if Claire is really into the book we are on (this happens frequently).  Claire will bring out the book and we'll read on the couch while Peter plays with his paw patrols on the floor by us.  Bryce was home for a part of the day even though he was on call so that was nice!  I spent a good chunk of the day studying (I had 45ish pages of reading from various textbooks, plus a few research articles to read) while the kids listened to boxcar children audiobooks and played with blocks, magformers, and plus plus.  After I finished studying I made this Zuppa Toscana soup for dinner (so yummy!).  Bryce was able to be home for dinner and then had go out to work for a few hours afterwards.  Claire tried a few bites of the soup and Peter refused to touch his.  With our kids we try to stick to the rule that we choose "what and when" they eat and they get to choose "if and how much" they eat.  I always offer whatever the main dish is and usually a fruit +vegetable.  With this meal the vegetable and protein were in the soup so in addition to the soup they were given a banana and whole wheat bread +butter to go with their dinner.  Hopefully they'll grow out of picky eating eventually!  (They're supposed to right?!)  Bryce and I however thoroughly enjoyed the soup and I made enough we'll be having leftovers.  After dinner we did the bedtime routine of baths, restocking their clothing cubbies (will discuss in a later post), and reading.  Peter was asleep by 7:30, Claire by 8, and then I went to bed by 9:30 so I would be ready for my 5:15 am alarm.  It was a nice slow, yet still productive weekend.  I'm feeling refreshed and ready for a new week! 

Claire's 100th Day of School

Today was Claire's 100th day of school celebration.  Her teacher gave her class an assignment to bring a collection of 100 things.  I suggested several ideas that I thought were fantastic. 

Me: 100 goldfish on a poster made to look like they are swimming in the ocean?! 
Claire: No.  

Me: 100 skittles in the shape of a rainbow?!
Claire: No 

Me: 100 pom poms  on a poster of a gumball machine.  You love gum balls!
Claire: No.  Well, maybe if we used real gumballs.
Me: We are not buying 100 gumballs.
Claire: Then, no.  

Claire is very much my child and is fiercely independent.  She likes to do things her own way and likes to come up with ideas herself.  I truly love this about her, but at times it makes things a bit tricky.  So at a loss, I suggested we take a trip to the dollar store to see if anything there sparked an idea for her.  At first she simply wanted to make a poster with 100 star stickers.  I said that could probably work and we grabbed a poster board and a pack of star stickers while we continued to browse.  Her teacher had said to "get creative!" and "think of something unique with your child!".  I wasn't sure 100 star stickers was exactly along those lines, but I mean, she is only in kindergarten.  A collection of 100 toothpicks would probably work.

We kept browsing the aisles a bit and came to the puzzle section.  I pointed out some 100 piece puzzles and she found a 100 piece rainbow cake puzzle.  Perfect!  A celebratory cake puzzle for the 100th day of school.  We both agreed the 100 piece puzzle that we could turn into a poster was a "unique" and "creative" collection of 100 things.  

Claire put the puzzle together by herself and I helped her glue it to the poster.  She wrote "Happy 100th Day of School!" (it is too faint to really see in the picture).  She also still insisted on decorating the poster with the star stickers around the puzzle.  I said that was a great idea!  We could do 100 stars AND have the 100 piece puzzle.  She shrugged and said, "I'll just put on as many stars as I want."  There are more than 100 stars on the poster.  And it looks better than it would have with only 100.  Like I said, fiercely independent.  I love her independence, self-reliance, and determination.  And I love that she is so much like me. That independence will serve her well in life....but like later in life when she is an adult and I am no longer reminding myself of positive parenting mantras through gritted teeth. (Kidding. Mostly).  My parents love that I have a child just like me.  Karma at its finest.    

Kid Activities

 Peter hanging out with me while Claire is at her painting class.  Peter gets to have some screen time (a rare treat!) and play the Khan Academy app on the kindle while she is at class so he looks forward to it as much as she does :)!

This is the first year we've really entered the realm of kid activities.  Claire took ballet once a week when she was 3 (she turned 4 midway in the season).  She was not interested in taking ballet again the next year and instead wanted to try piano.  So she took piano the next year starting in September when she was 4 (she turned 5 in January).  We didn't do the traditional preschool route with her and instead did a combination of homeschool preschool + the waterford upstart program with her.  Then this year she started kindergarten and we've added more activities for both her and Peter.  

Claire has half day kindergarten 5 days a week.  Since she would be gone every morning Mon-Fri and is Peter's only sibling we felt like it would be better for him to do a more traditional preschool program so he had more opportunities to socialize and play with kids his age.  He goes to preschool 2 mornings a week and Bryce also takes him to the treehouse museum one morning a week when they do a preschool/early literacy program.  Claire continued to take piano lessons this year until her teacher moved away in October.  

We're lucky enough to have a community center near where we live that offers tons of kids classes and activities.  The first class we tried there was a 6 week arts and crafts in the fall for Claire that she loved.  Currently Peter is playing soccer there once a week and Claire is taking a painting class and a piano class.  Peter had no interest in taking any of the art classes haha.  And Claire was not interested in any of the sports, until going to Peter's soccer games.  Now she wants to maybe try soccer the next session.  

My kids really enjoy when we have at least a few scheduled activities to look forward to throughout the week, and they seem to behave better if we aren't stuck at home constantly.  I think it's so good for them to have the opportunity to try lots of activities and figure out what they like.  I also really love the 6 week option that way if they end up not liking an activity they chose they are not stuck doing it for months on end and only have to stick it out for 6 weeks.  We haven't decided exactly how we'll structure and handle kid activities as they get older.  I'm thinking we'll try to have them both do one physical activity (sports, dance, etc.) and one musical or art activity.  For now we are all really enjoying our current set up and I'm curious to see what activities they get involved in as they grow!