Jerry Sloan Banner Night at Utah Jazz

We heard the Laydens were coming for Jerry Sloan's Banner Night so we bought tickets to the game because we're fans of Jerry and of the Laydens. Who needs tickets though, when you've got such good friends? We picked up Mitch and the girls and headed right into the VIP reception. Here's a list of the people I smiled at, shook hands with, or stood by (but did not take pictures because you just can't act celebrity crazy in the VIP room): Frank & Barbara Layden, Scott Layden, Jerry Sloan, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Bryon Russell, Mark Eaton, Senator Orrin Hatch.

 

Mitch gave us great seats to the game too, so we didn't have to sit in "coffin corner" which are the seats I picked out. 

 We stayed out way later than usual while Grandma Rainey stayed with the kids. It was SUPER fun!

Our art projects

Jovie has been READING, which is super exciting because it's the first time I tried to teach a three-year-old to read. She's also practicing writing her name and she's getting good in a not-consistent way. She loves to paint and draw with markers, and she can switch characters as fast as a song changes. She's energetic and excited and resourceful, a good hider and finder of things, and very lovable.

 

Once Jovie saw Ikey's matroyshkas, she wanted some too, so we picked up the kit at the craft store.

 and painted our faces off...and theirs on. 

Ikey drew this picture of our family on Jupiter.

 He also drew this bunk bed and train table scene...

...which looks a whole lot like this scene from Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we LOVE, but haven't watched for like six months. The things that are rattling around in his head always surprise me when they come out.

Ikey's goals

Ikey made four goals at the beginning of this year: 

1) KYHFAOOTY at school

2) Pass the next level at ski lessons

3) Practice drums every work day

4) Paint the matroyshkas

Here's the current status:

1) He only had KYHFAOOTY troubles one day during January. That is an amazing improvement! He's happy, Miss Terry is happy, and the parents are really happy.

2) Ski lessons are going well. He has two lessons left so we'll get the verdict soon enough.

3) I lost all good parenting sense and couldn't remember how to motivate a 5-year-old on how to work on something that is good for him, so I checked in with my sister. She reminded me about the power of charts and stickers. How did I forget? So we worked up a little chart with lots of little pictures of drum sets and tiny little drumstick stickers. When he does a good practice or a good job at Class with Cathy, he earns his drumsticks for that day. When he has a whole drumline done, he gets a prize. 

Two little drumsticks so far!

He finished the first one this week, so we had a pizza party and movie night with Grandma Rainey. It was awesome. Along the way, he learned how to play the Crash Cymbal Beat, the Dance Beat, and the Rock Beat pretty well and we didn't have too much bossiness by me. Yay!

4) We printed out an example of the owl matroyshkas we wanted to paint, and Ikey choose the colors (see his design sheet in the photo below). 

 It took three days to finish these cute guys. He was very proud and so was I. 

Ikey is a smart and earnest little fella. He likes to accomplish things and he is great at paying attention to his projects. He is a very enjoyable person to live with. He was sick this week, so he missed three days of school. I wasn't sad to spend the day even with the slightly ill version of him, and in fact, I missed him a lot when he went back today. 

Skiing on the weekend

Ikey was sick on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday so we didn't even change out of pjs those days. I'm quite sympathetic to sickly kids so I'll just stay in bed. We coaxed him into going up to Canyons with us on Sunday. We told him to bring a little train and leave his skis at home. He crawled all around the Sweet Pea run and tunneled the train into a lot of snowbanks and enjoyed himself while we skied with Jovie.

 

I went for a ski run by myself, without poles, which was really weird. I must not be a very good skier to rely on poles so much...or maybe I'm a REALLY good skier because of that. I don't know much about skiing. 

TB skied from Sweet Pea to the base (without poles!) and barely beat us. He said it was weird too. 

Skiing and Sundance Film Festival

The kids went to their third ski lesson and I skied by myself. Seriously, there was no one else out there skiing. It hasn't snowed for a month so the conditions are not great. The kids' teachers (Erica from America for Jovie and Martina from Argentina for Ikey) report that they are doing well.
We rode the Park City bus from Canyons to downtown.

The kids parked themselves on the stairs of the HP Live Lounge at the Sundance House and watched "Sound of Music" while I watched a presentation by the filmmakers of "Tiger of the Himalayas: The Apa Sherpa Story". Then Apa Sherpa spoke and he was so funny and charming. He has summited Mount Everest 21 times,  which is more than anyone else ever, and he has 13 world records for climbing and other high-altitude exploits. He is from Nepal, but he lives in Utah now. I am obsessed with stories about Everest and I'm a huge fan of his, so it was so exciting to hear him speak and to meet him.

 

We went to the airbnbHaus where the greeter said they were offering complimentary drinks. Jovie went right up to the baristas and said, "Two hot chocolates please." We were the only kids in the building and everyone laughed, which made her a little shy. We went to talk to a Scott McGillivray look-alike and the barista delivered two little hot chocolates to us.  

When we got home, the kids played in the snow while I unloaded the car. It is impossible for you to imagine how much gear and clothing we take every time we go skiing. It takes 15 minutes to get it all back in the house and another half hour to hang up all the wet stuff and organize the ski bags again. Jovie wanted to go in the hot tub so we did it. Here's a movie of the kids swimming and snorkeling in the hot tub: http://youtu.be/7KER8Uj4ubs

When the dad and boy are away...

During school one day, Jovie and I got a treat at Great Harvest. This is a bread beard.

 We took all our tarnished silver jewelry...

 and polished it up. That was a stinky endeavor.

We looked at our blog books. It looks like we blogged maybe a little too much in 2013. The book is 440 pages long.

Ballet, Drumset Success, Union Station, Dinner in Ogden

TB is out of town this week, so we are working harder than usual to entertain ourselves. 

Jovie was adorable at dance class this morning. We usually arrive early from preschool drop-off so we discuss interesting things with Miss Kim for a while.

After school, we came home to eat some lunch and clean up a little. We had a little drum practice to do too, so Ikey worked on the Crash Cymbal Beat which he refused to do during lessons and which he told me he was afraid of because he didn't know if he would recognize the symbol for the crash cymbal. He was quite brave about it though, and it was his best beat ever. Check it out!

http://youtu.be/8W3NNpyFkH0

 After all that work, we went to Ogden to the Union Station museums. We met Breezy and Kade and Sophie and climbed all over the caboose, chased the model train, and drove the real retired engine. Ikey yelled, "Oh no! Emergency! Cows on the track. I have to use the emergency brake!"  Jovie told Breezy and me that we were the cows. Breezy was only slightly offended until I told her that we should just moo and get out of the way. We'll ( hopefully) be assigned more flattering characters next time. 

We were hungry at this point. Me especially because I was doing a fasting experiment. TB and I have read a lot about the health benefits of fasting and since I haven't missed a meal in about 10 years, I decided to start easy with a 24 hour deal that would only miss two meals. I gave up my first attempt after about 8 hours because I wanted to get Chinese food with Dallin for his birthday. I gave up my second attempt after about 8  hours because I was going to the event at Sundance, although I should have stuck with it because I only ate a miniature cupcake at that one. This time, I fasted for 24 hours between the Dairy Keen yesterday and Slackwater Pizza today. That is following the letter of the experiment, but probably not the spirit as it started and ended with big junk food meals exactly 24 hours apart. I'll do better next time when I have 36 hours as the goal and will really have to skip three meals. Anyway, we had a MacNCheese Pizza at Slackwater and it was tasty.

We saw this weird thing on the drive home. Looks like a space shuttle got lost and just landed on a school in Ogden. 

Ice Castles in Midway

TB is out of town, so we packed up our snow clothes and went to Heber for lunch at Dairy Keen: "The home of the train" and it was predictably delightful. We brought our snow clothes too so we could tour the ice castles in Midway. This big-house-sized castle is built completely with ice, no support structure. The castle wasn't too busy on a Tuesday afternoon so we ran around and climbed through tunnels for about an hour. 

Movie: http://youtu.be/Z9n8KCLuIZg

OLAF!

They installed colored LEDs in the ice and we really wanted to see how it looked, but we just couldn't wait for night fall. 

Utah Museum of Natural History

This is a fun place to go on a chilly day! We dug for dinosaur bones in the outdoor patio which is a first for us and I intended to make a super-cool time lapse movie of it, but I haven't figured out the camera we've owned for years, so I recorded all my bossing around of the kids and turned the camera off during the action part. I'll try again next time. 

We always have dinosaur cookies. Ikey chews around the edges and saves the frosting until Jovie's is totally gone. He does this with hot chocolate too. He said it's because he likes to have hot chocolate when everyone else's is gone so it's like he's the only one with it.

Organizing for America at Sundance Film Festival

I LOVE Sundance. Because I don't live in Park City, it doesn't make my life harder. Also, I LOVE celebrities and you can always spot some here. I volunteered at the Organizing for America event at airbnb Haus and they gave me an invitation list and told me to check people in. I was like a little bouncer. It was so fun! I saw a bunch of celebrities (Adrian Grenier, Peter Glatzer, Mike Farah, Billy Eichner, Jon Carson) and turned away some people who were really dedicated to crashing a party.

Jon Carson, Peter Glatzer, Adrian Grenier

Jon Carson was the Field Director for President Obama's campaign 2008 and 2012. I like him. You may not. He'd probably be able to talk you into it though. 

Sundance Kids & Jupiter Bowl

My friend Holly is the director of Utah Film Center and she offered us tickets to the first ever Sundance Kids event and we jumped at the chance because we love to be VIPs. We went to the world premier of the English language version of "Ernest and Celestine". It was really good. I sat next to the chairs marked "Reserved" and whispered to Todd, "Maybe I'll sit by someone famous!" When a friendly woman named Lilly sat by me, Ikey loudly asked, "Are you sitting by someone famous?" My face turned red, but luckily it was a dark theater and Lilly thought he was asking her the question. She said, "Yes, I am." She introduced us to the director of the French film Benjamin Renner, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. 

Then we went to the VIP party at Red Rock Brewing where we gathered some swag and ate some good food. 

That evening, the kids went to Shane and Shauna's for a sleepover and we went back up to Park City for a 40th birthday party for Rachael at Jupiter Bowl. We had a private room with four lanes, tons of food and friends. Everybody wore matching shoes. It was super fun. 

Skiing at Canyons and Olympic Trials at PCMR

It was the second ski lesson day at Canyons so I dropped the kids off and headed out on my own. This was my first time skiing as an adult this season and it was great. The day was warm and sunny and while I don't love skiing by myself, it wasn't a bad way to spend a morning. 

After lessons, went to Park City Mountain Resort to catch some of the Grand Prix in Slope Style and Half Pipe Skiing. These races would determine some of the members of the US Olympic Team, so we were really psyched to see it, but our timing was totally off so there were no events going on. We wandered around and checked out the venue and Ikey fell off the bleachers, but we didn't see any Olympians. 

See those HUGE Slope Style jumps at the top of the hill? They were HUGE from far away. Those are brave skiers. We watched the events on TV the next day.