Easter weekend

We had a great Easter weekend, starting with egg decorating a few days ago. The Paas kit we bought had stickers and hats to dress up the eggs with; the photo below shows the result. On Saturday morning we enjoyed an Easter egg hunt for the kids at Barb & Dave Frommel's house. This was Elizabeth's first real chance to participate in the hunt, and she loved it. Saturday night, we had dinner with Jason & Lindy Kearns and Yoshi and Sandra Tagawa. Jason and his family are in town from Washington DC with their 3 kids for a spring break vacation. Jason and Yoshi are fraternity brothers, and I haven't seen them since Andrew was a few months old. It was great to catch up! On Sunday, of course the Easter bunny visited our house and Andrew and Liz had another chance to search for candy-filled eggs. Next was church, where Elizabeth got to show off her pretty dress.

Winter Park Ski Train

Amy, Andrew and I took a ride on the Winter Park Ski Train yesterday. (Elizabeth stayed with Grandma & Grandpa - she's not skiing quite yet.) Of course Andrew loved the train ride, and it's 29 tunnels each way, including the 6.2 mile Moffat tunnel under the continental divide. Amy and I loved not driving - or sitting in an I-70 traffic jam. To top it off, the snow and weather were both great.

Artwork & numbers

Here is a sample of Elizabeth's day care artwork.


And here is an example of Andrew's fascination with numbers and math.


Finally, here are some samples of Andrew's creative side. He is left-handed, after all.

One year with Elizabeth

Yesterday (March 6) is the one-year anniversary of Elizabeth's adoption day. It's almost hard to imagine now a time when she wasn't part of the family.

Walking, talking machine

It's been a while since I've posted an update on Elizabeth. A while back I posted a short video of some of her first, wobbly steps. A few months later, she's walking like a pro, and starting to talk, too. She's come a long way since she started the Ponseti treatment for her club feet!

Ski school

Yesterday, we put Andrew in ski school at Winter Park, hoping that would help him improve faster than we can teach him ourselves. We put him in Level 2, where they spend the day on the "magic carpet" - a tiny hill with a conveyor belt the kids stand on to get up the hill. Looks like it was a little too easy for him, so next time it'll definitely be Level 3, where they ride up a real ski run on a cart pulled by a snowmobile. His instructor said he spent a lot of the morning crying for mommy, but in the afternoon he calmed down and skied great - the best in his class.

This is Andrew's 3rd season on skis, but he's only been skiing a few days each season, and only a few runs per day. He started with a little rubber strap to keep his ski tips together, but we took that off this year and he's done great without it. He loves to go fast, he can do a snowplow (or as we call it, a pizza wedge), and he can turn fairly well. Amy and I took him for a run with us before his lesson started, and again after his lesson was over. He didn't want to go afterward, but he said he would go if we gave him a Pez candy afterward. He drives a hard bargain!