New Room!

Haley's new room actually looks like a room now!  

We finally got her a real bed, no more sleeping on a futon couch...although she never complained once about it!  She is just over the moon that she has her own space now...she would have been happy as a clam just sleeping on the floor.  I still would like to get a headboard...but that will come in time.

Morgan was sad seeing her room mate move out, but she's gotten used to it.  All I know is that there is less fighting and bedtime is sooooo much easier!

Progress....it feels so good.

Bike riding again!

 For the past few Sunday afternoons we've been enjoying some family bike rides.  Yes, as in with everyone!  Morgan is on the tandem with Ryan who also pulls the trailer with the little ones.  Haley and I are on our own bikes.  It's a bit crazy as you can imagine, but we stick to the river trail which has been nice.  Haley is still trying to figure it all out...she rides her bike nearly everyday, but it's to her friend's house or to go see the horses....that kind of riding.  The idea of consistent pedaling for longer distances is something that's kinda hard for her.  So we keep our rides pretty short...it's best if we can end a ride when everyone is still smiling!

On this day, Haley was on the tandem.  Morgan stayed home nursing a sore knee she had from falling of her bunk.  

Anyway, this week Ryan is in CO working so I opted to take the little ones out for a ride myself while the older two were at school.  I stayed close to home as I was a bit nervous to ride down the big hill to the valley floor...the whole trying to ride back up pretty much scared me.  So I found a little loop with some hills of its own and that was plenty for me!  

Riding with the trailer took me back to when I pulled Haley and Morgan when they were wee ones.  Some old posts on that here and here.  Oh the memories!  But I will say that Piper and Rory get along waaaay better in the trailer than Haley and Morgan did...so there's that, which is nice.

Happy Monday ya'll!!

End of the season.

The Sundance Snowsports crew, 2015.

See if you can find me...I'm standing next to my bearded brother.

Another season is coming to an end.  The mountain is closing for skiing on Sunday.

Bittersweet.

It wasn't the best for snowfall, in fact, it was one of the worst in history.  But we made do, and still had an awesome season.  I love working with this group of people, and of course with my little bro.

I brought my uniform home to wash it yesterday and had to empty it of everything that has collected in my pockets...thought I'd share, because I always find it fascinating how much stuff can accumulate.

We have:

name tag

PSIA level 1 pin

"Believe in Steven" button

a handful of zip ties

numerous foam stickers

chocolate gold coin

an edgie-wedgie

two Sun Dollars

sunscreen

chapstick

gum

employee I.D.

responsibility code cards

season pass

This is kinda on the light side too.

On a different note...Spring has Sprung here and it's beautiful!  

Picture from my walk this morning.

Have a great weekend ya'll!

Makeup Monday

Did you know the first day of Spring was last Friday?  

I'm pretty excited about it!  The weather has been warming up (70's over the weekend!) and our ski season is coming to a close.  

Don't worry, we weren't driving in the photo.  Just sitting in the parking lot listening/dancing to Maroon 5's Sugar before we headed into Costco.

Soooo, with changing seasons comes different lipstick colors!  

I'm moving aside my neutrals for more pinky/peachy Spring colors.  And I thought I'd share a few. 

From left to right:
Revlon Lip Butter in Strawberry Shortcake
Covergirl in Decadent Peach
Jing Ai Velvet Lip Shine (not sure the color...it's what I'm wearing in the photo)
Maybelline Color Whisper in Oh La Lilac
Maybelline Color Whisper in Coral Ambition
Wet 'n Wild in Just Peachy
Buxom in Mistress
Tarte Lip Surgence lip tint (not sure the color)  I didn't take the cap off because the top was too messed up.

The only ones that I'm not super crazy about are the Maybelline Color Whispers.  I love Color Whispers in general, they are very moisturizing and have just a slight color tint (that lilac color looks scary in the tube but not half as dark on).  However, these two colors are a bit chalky and can make lines on your lips more noticeable (if that makes sense). But I just put on a good chapstick base and it works fine.

So just this past year I've been trying out new lipstick colors.  Having red hair I never know what I can and can not pull off.  I'm still not uber adventurous when it comes to my lip color or any type of makeup for that matter (remember my whole looking like a clown) but I'm really loving these colors!  And I have my eye on a few more!

So happy Spring ya'll!!

My helpers.

After many days of turning a blind eye to the playroom...it's just so easy to shut the door and walk away...I decided to finally clean it up.  I've been on a mission of throwing stuff out.  Last week I tossed three large garbage bags from Haley and Morgan's room...go me!

But anyway, the playroom, I kid you not I couldn't even see the floor there were so many toys and dress up stuff and just junk everywhere!  I should have taken  before picture...not really...that's too embarrassing.  As I was cleaning the little ones decided to "help" me.  I would give them a task for them to do but they're idea of helping was to get numerous grocery bags or empty bins and just pack as much random stuff as they could in it and then bring it over to me.  It was actually quite comical because they really felt they were working hard (heavy panting and saying things like "Phew!  Look it how good we're doing?!  It's almost clean!".  Meanwhile I'm surrounded by bags trying to find the home for all the stuff inside them.

But the playroom is now clean...for the moment that is.
Happy Thursday!

Our St. Patrick's Day

 The week before St. Patrick's Day my mom sent the girls this Leprechaun trap that she MADE!  All out of paper!  As I've said before she is the paper craft master!  Well, it's all paper except for the ladder which my dad made from wood.  Isn't it amazing?!!  The girls were super thrilled to set the trap the night before and hopefully catch something!

Checking the trap first thing!

They found a little leprechaun inside and all his gold!

 This is the second year in a row that we've grabbed green donuts St. Patrick's day morning...I think it's our thing now.  I like it.

 I ventured out of my comfort zone and went with green makeup.  I had to watch a couple youtube videos showing green makeup tutorials first to build up my courage.  My biggest fears with going darker on the lids or using brighter colors is 1) looking like a clown or 2) I'll look like a hooker.  I know...I'm weird.

But luckily I don't think I looked like either, and I was happy with how it turned out.

So, back to St. Patrick's Day...I planned my traditional dinner of Irish Stew (except I couldn't find any lamb at the store and had to go with beef), my homemade green cornmeal bread and for dessert, I made a green cake.

So...quick story about the green cake.  I was in the kitchen frosting the cake when Haley called me to help her with something upstairs.  I was only away from the cake for a couple of minutes, but when I came back in the kitchen I found this little stinker like this...

I immediately asked her, "What did you do?" and her quick response, "Nothing!".  She had absolutely no idea she had the evidence all over her face.  I couldn't help but laugh and take her picture.  We won't tell Jeffy (who joined us for dinner) what she did...it will be our secret.  My brother's have issues with my children contaminating food.  I do try really hard to make sure they don't just for the record!  But come on!!  Look at that face!!  How can anyone be mad at that face?!

Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick's Day!!

Making Changes

 This was last Wednesday skiing with my little ones.

This was this Wednesday trying to paint while nursing a sick one.

Not ideal for sure...she came down with a stomach bug, most likely she got sick from Morgan who stayed home from school on Monday.  However, Morgan wasn't sick to this extent.  Anyway, so I painted like a crazy woman in the morning while Piper slept then I cuddled on the couch with her for about 2 1/2 hours watching numerous Pioneer Woman and House Hunters episodes.  Yep, guilt free sofa surfing!!

So yeah, painting.  There are some big changes happening around here.  As you are probably aware (or not) my two oldest (Haley and Morgan) share a bedroom.  They don't always get along...in fact they have pretty much opposite ways of life.  Haley is much neater and likes to have her room clean and in a certain way (most of the time) and Morgan on the other hand isn't so much that way.  But, I was (note "was") holding on that they still share a room because it helps them to understand to compromise and work together...important life skills!!  

Well, I hit the end of my rope!!  The older they get the more fighting and bickering they do....it's awful!  Several weeks ago in the midst of one of there fights (and girls can get pretty physical, it's not just boys!) I barged in and began removing every toy, craft, doll, EVERYTHING that they held dear out of their room.  I stashed it all in our spare room and boy oh boy did I have their attention then!!  Let's just say there were a lot of tears over this one!!  To earn their things back they needed to get along (NO FIGHTING) for three days in a row and then they could pick ONE item to get back.  Then another three days for another item and so on and so on.  They eventually got everything back.  But, Ryan and I have decided that it's time they each have their own space.  

Soooo, we are moving Haley into our spare room (our futon will be moved to the basement/craft room) and Morgan will be moving into the room that Piper and Rory share.  And Piper and Rory will be still be sharing, but will move into Haley and Morgan's room.  Does that make sense?  It's time anyway for Piper to move out of her toddler bed and Rory to move out of her crib and into the bunk bed.

I'm actually pretty darn thrilled about this, as I think it will relieve a lot of the fighting between the older girls.

And all the girls seems to be excited about it as well.

So hence the painting.  I've painted Haley's new room a turquoise color...however, what I thought was going to be a very light turquoise turned out to be much brighter!  I'm not that keen on it (but perhaps it will grow on me) but Haley is in love with it!  I guess that's all that matters.

We still have quite a bit of work to do...new beds to purchase and lots and lots of cleaning!  There is so much stuff that needs to be thrown out or organized before these kids make the move into their new rooms.

And if you are wondering, it hasn't even been a year since redoing their rooms the last time.  Ah, good times.

The little ones' room.

Hope ya'll are having a great week!

Birthday Pictures

I had a really nice birthday evening.

Except for the part when my kids asked us every two minutes when we would sing Happy Birthday and eat the cake.  And then they argued about who got what piece and who got what strawberry.

Seriously...it feels like I have 30 kids surrounding me at times...not four.  

Are girls just extraordinarily loud?  

The answer is yes.

But enough complaining about my extremely loud household.

The cake was compliments of my parents...even though they have been back in the LBC it seems they have taken on the tradition of ordering the cakes for us when they can't be here in person.  Yes, I now expect you do this all the time...just kidding...but seriously, I will totally let you.

 Like I said before...my big birthday surprise was a new bike!

Here she is...what a beauty!

It's a Garneau...fairly new in the states and I'm pretty darn excited about it.

And then Jeffy gifted me this shirt from Snowbird.

Cute huh?!

Oh, and I can't forget to mention that we got SNOW this weekend!!

It actually snowed on my birthday too!

In fact, we got snowed in at work on Saturday.

Just a few of us chillin' in the yurt.

I guess it had been too long since the last storm and everyone forgot how to drive in snow.  A car ended up in the river in the canyon and a UTA bus slid out too.  It was huge mess getting the tow and plows up to clear everything out...so we were stuck for a good three hours at Sundance before we got to leave.  

Good times....well, not so much.

Anyway, I hope everyone else had a great weekend!

Happy Monday!