V is hardly terrified at all!

Wesley sees this and thinks, “What shall I aim for in an entire field of snow?  Oh, yes, definitely the thin ice.”

“Nailed it!”

Daddy.

Daddy, Daddy?

Daddy!!

A doesn’t need no stinkin’ sled.

I still haven’t ever seen this girl afraid.  She had a pretty cool move where she was able to slide right between her dad’s legs…with a surprising deficit of damage.

Fearless and beautiful!

It’s hard to beat Kyla when it comes to sheer joy–even landing 20 feet from her sled.

Yep, the lovely, lovely house had a hot tub.

The next day’s adventure was began with an “escape room in the box” that was so much fun…even when we discovered Clue 4 & 5 were missing.  That afternoon, we were ready to work our bodies instead of our minds.  This was the first time cross country skiing for the 5 kids (the youngest one stayed back with his parents) and the rest of us had only gone a few times before.  

 I could do this sport all winter–it is so fun to trek through the snow!  We started late and pushed the kids about 6 or 7 of the 8km of the trail, leaving them at a trailhead to pick up, as it was getting dark.  

 The sheer pleasure of the fun exercise coupled with the beautiful scenery by the hatchery was one of the weekend’s highlights for me.   

 

 So we didn’t.  Well, not until we went out for brats, played in the snow some more, completely fell apart (Piper), and recovered with one last stop at the Gingerbread Factory. 

 

And this is why my, ahem, winter lights stay up so long. Yes, I don’t want the work of taking them down, but my excuse is because if there’s a chance of snow, my snowflake lights should still be on the pergola.  

And the birds.  We have both a hummingbird feeder and a regular bird feeder outside the kitchen window, and I enjoy seeing the winged traffic outside.  

One of the highlights for me was taking the kids on a walk through the trails at Castle Park.  And when I say “kids”, I should clarify that I wound up with only the kids I wanted to claim at the time. Just as we arrived at the park, Dwayne texted me to say he was driving off the ferry and heading toward the cabin. Simultaneously, I asked which kid had brought their communication device (smart phone, flip phone, GPS watch) with them: dead, no, nope.  So I said they couldn’t stay at the park while I went for a long walk; they had to come with me.  The girls were fine with it, but Wes began.  Began what?  Began being Whiney Wes.  To the mother that has had No Break from him since we started home schooling, and Extra No Break during the school holiday.  I called Dwayne and said his son was waiting for him in the parking lot, and he should come get him while the girls and I went for walk.  And Wes preferred being abandoned over walking through the forest.  

Luckily, there were cookies, blocks, and Minecraft to offer variety. 

Doing slight introspection, I realized what I don’t like about Polar Bear dives is that they are crowded, so you have to park further away and walk–in winter, toward water, returning wet.  And there’s lots of people, and waiting around, and anticipation of a whistle at exactly the right time. This made me unenthusiastic about Double Bluff, or Kirkland, or Seattle, or Edmonds.

But there’s also a lake nearby our house.  With parking spots very close to the water.  And no official Polar Jump (though an unofficial one, perhaps of loosely connected Gold’s Gym members, judging by hoodies and duffles), so no crowds.  And a dock to jump off instead of trekking over yucky, rocky beach and shallows, inching our way to hypothermia.

So we picked up Piper and her BFF and headed over.  All the kids were enthusiastic about the jump and Dwayne was equally enthusiastic about not jumping. My lucky bikini made its annual trip out of the house and the towels were fresh out of the dryer.

While we were aiming for noon, it was a little more like 12:10 when we lined up and…..

Kyla is the reason I didn’t chicken out or even hesitate–she grabbed my hand when we were ready to jump!

I have found no way to work with Wesley all day on his room without finishing the day grouchy and tired enough to drown out any sense of accomplishment.  Thus it was today, but we are ending the year with less stuff in the house.

This is mostly clean–

This is fully cleaned, sorted, organized:

We win Audible! Kyla’s listening makes up the majority of the stats, but here’s what this year’s numbers are:

Total Hours Listened:  2,212 hours (there are 8,760 hours in a year, almost 6,000 waking hours).

Library of Approximately 250 titles.

Number of strongly worded letters encouraging Audible to make a shelving system so we can organize our library: 3.


Number of times that has worked: 0.