Snowboarding With Zoe

A week or so ago I took off some work and took Zoe snowboarding. She has been wanting to go for a couple years and I told her that when she was ten I would take her.  So I did.  We went up to a small resort up Ogden Canyon called Wolf Mountain.  They had a good deal on a lesson and lift ticket.  So she took a lesson and I boarded alone for an hour.  During her lesson, the instructor was just having her walk up the hill a little and showing her how to strap in and out of her bindings and then coming down the hill 20 feet or so.  At the end of the lesson, she was supposed to go up the lift with the instructor and come all the way down the hill (the bunny hill).  But she refused. She wouldn't get on the lift.  So the instructor gave up trying to get her to go up and handed her off to me.  She told me she wasn't going to get on the lift.  She was afraid she would fall off from up high in the air.  So we went to the lodge and had a piece of pizza and just sat there for a little bit. After awhile, she felt rested again and I told her about the safety bars that you can put down on the lifts to keep you safe.  She wasn't exactly convinced, but I told her in the nicest way possible that if she ever wanted to go again, she was going to have to get on a lift.  So she relented.  And it was fine.  Getting off the lift with a snowboard is not very easy, especially for beginners.  But I just held onto her tight and kinda held her up until we were out of the way of the lift and it worked out fine.  The first time down the hill took us about an hour, but then we went again and again and again and again.  And by the end of the day, she was doing really well.  Much better than I thought she would.  I mostly just held her hands and went down backwards on my toe edge while she went down forward on her heel edge.  By the end she was going back and forth across the hill with some comfort on her heel edge. Next time maybe she will be ready to try out her toe edge.  Here are some pics.

Zoe and I on the lift.

Taking a break.

Coming down at the end of the day.

It was a great day.  Zoe said it was one of her best days ever. 

Santa Claus

So I know some people are going to really not agree with me here (Shelli) but I don't like telling my kids that there is a guy named Santa Claus.  It has bothered me ever since the oldest ones were small. I just don't know what the guy adds to Christmas.  I think Christmas can be fun and exciting without him.  I admit I was super excited about him coming when I was younger.  But I am starting to think that it was mostly just the presents I was excited about and that the delivery method wasn't that important.  I don't know for sure, but I think that had I known the presents came from my parents, I still would have been excited.  I may have even been more amazed come Christmas morning.  I mean we lived a pretty poor childhood (as far as money goes; I suppose you could say it was rich in other ways), but somehow on Christmas my mom always seemed to pull off the biggest feats of magic.  We always got what we asked for.  Or at least a reasonable part of what we asked for.  The main thing we wanted was always there.  We may have had to wear shoes with holes in them and get all our clothes from thoughtful neighbors because there was no money, but somehow on Christmas my mom always came through.  And Santa Claus got all the credit.  And she loved it that way.  But I just don't get it.  I don't mean to say she should have wanted to hog the glory for those wonderful Christmas mornings, but I think I would have been even more amazed if I had known it came from her.  And Christmas would have seemed even more magical.  I think one of the main reasons I believed in Santa for so long was because we were so poor all the time and I knew there was no way my parents could have given me what I got for Christmas.  And that never let me fully appreciate what I got for Christmas.  I was generally excited about what I got, but if something broke, it was no big deal.  I mean, it wasn't like someone had to pay for it.  Some fat man and his elves could just make up another one with their magic supplies of natural resources and callused hands.

Santa Claus was a big part our life when I was a kid.  I mean my brother Adam wanted to be Santa when he grew up for much longer than most kids play with that idea.  And my mom just loved the idea of Santa Claus.  She would go out of her way to prove to us year after year that he was real.  She would make up elaborate yet somehow believable stories to convince us if we ever started to doubt.  We would try to put our letters to Santa in the mailbox without her knowing so that if we got what we asked for we would know once and for all that he existed.  And somehow she would always manage to get them out of the mailbox before the mailman got there.  She must have checked the mailbox every morning the whole month of December.  And she wrote back to us sometimes.  Posing as Santa Claus of course.  So I was convinced.  Did I get made fun of in school because of my continuing belief long after my classmates had stopped believing? Yes.  Yes I did.  But you know, I am a person of faith, and a Mormon at that, and I was used to believing in things that other people thought were silly, so their ridicule never bothered me.  All I ever really thought was, "you people of little faith, how can you be so unbelieving?"

I simply believed, and the one thing that clinched it all for me was that my mother told me it was true.  And because she said it was true, I believed it.  I believed pretty much everything she told me.  How was I supposed to know that she would mix truth and lies together in that same convincing voice.  I never suspected.  And to be perfectly honest, when I finally found out the truth, I was devastated.  I didn't break down crying or anything - because I was almost 13 years old at the time and by then I was way past the tearful stage - but it hurt.  I was reeling inside.  I didn't know what I could believe anymore.  It wasn't finding out that Santa Claus wasn't real that hurt, it was finding out that I no longer knew what I could believe.  I mean if this thing that my mother had spent so much time convincing me was true wasn't true, what was? What other things had my mother told me were true that were mere fabrications for her and my amusement?  I questioned everything she had ever told me.  I even questioned my faith in God, though by then I had received enough witnesses of His existence to know that questioning my faith in God wasn't necessary.

So I think, is that really what I want my kids to look back and remember?  If I tell my kids something, I want them to know it is what I believe and never have to doubt it.  They may not believe the same things as me all the time, but I don't want them wondering if I really believe the things I tell them to believe in. 

I suppose my experience with the fat man has negatively affected me and my desire to pass this "fun" tradition on to my kids.  I think there could be a happy medium between what I experienced and the other extreme of never mentioning the man to my kids.  And that is what I have tried to achieve with the kids so far.  But I fear I may have erred on the side of keeping the tradition in mind instead of keeping the truth in mind.  I have told them about Santa and that he is watching and that it was his reindeer that ate those carrots we left out.  But on the other hand when asked directly if he is real,  I usually dodge the question and say something like, "well what do you think?" 

So anyway, what does Santa Claus have to do with Christmas?  I mean, some might say he represents the spirit of Christmas or the love of children or the spirit of thoughtless giving or some other thing like that.  I don't agree.  I mean if Christmas needs some guy to represent the spirit of the season or the love of children or the spirit of thoughtless giving, why do we need someone other than Christ to fill that role? Do we really need some jolly old saint?  Sure, I think in certain doses, he might add a little zing, but for the most part I think he just distracts from what Christmas is all about.

So a few weeks ago Lila and Zoe and I were hanging out and they asked me if there really was Santa Claus and I said no.  They were somewhat surprised, I think, that I would answer so directly but it felt so good to say it.  I had been wanting to say it for years.  The kids were a bit unsure of what to think.  Zoe asked, "well who brings all those presents then?"  I told her it was me.  That I was Santa Claus.  They were really skeptical.  Lila said, "I don't believe it. How could you be Santa Claus?  There is no way you could deliver all those presents to all those kids in one night."  It is hard to argue with that kind of logic.  But I explained that I was only Santa to my own kids and that everyone else's parents were their Santa.  So after talking about it for awhile I thought it was pretty clear.  But I was wrong.  A week or two later they brought it up again and were talking about how Santa could bring then anything they wanted.  And I was being a stinker and said that I would only bring them what I wanted them to have. And they both looked confused and one of them said, "but I thought you said you weren't Santa Claus."  Now it was my turn to look confused.  I just don't know where the confusion came in.  How could I have been more clear than, "Santa Claus is not real.  I bring you the presents."?  But apparently after our conversation they had had their own conversation and decided I was just messing with them.  So I had to assure them one more time that it was me.  So I think they now know that there is no Santa Claus.  And I hope they let the other smaller kids know about soon too.  Leisel won't be hard to convince.  Last year she told me that she didn't believe and that she thought it was me.  She is a smart girl.

I have told my kids to not mention it to others outside of our family and to definitely not make fun of anyone else that still believes, so hopefully that will happen.  But if you haven't told your own kids, this year is a good one to do it in.  May as well get it over with and stop all the deception.  Let's find out how fun Christmas can really be without all the lies.  That is what I am hoping will happen anyway.  I guess I have either ruined it for them for the rest of their childhood or not.  But I don't think I have.  I am convinced they will still enjoy Christmas without Santa.  I guess I will know in a couple months.

It's been awhile

Been awhile since I posted (do I say that every time?).  But we are always busy doing something, so here are some pictures (but not nearly as many as I wanted to post).  Ethnie is as cute as ever, so I will start out with her.  Here she is sharing a fat boy with Leisel.

And here she is checking out the cookie dough. This girl LOVES food.

One day Lila was whining at me that she wanted monkey bars, so I said, "well let's build some them."  I had all the kids pitch in some money from their piggy banks and I pitched in $20 and we all took a trip to the Home Depot and bought some pipe.  Then me and Luke nailed together some boards and drilled some holes and put in some pipe and voila!, instant monkey bars.  Well, ok it wasn't really instant.  It took about 4 hours to make.  Or maybe it was 8 hours.  I don't really remember.  But they loved them.  We will see how long they use them.

 

It is kind of a tradition now for me to take the kids camping on Father's day weekend and this year was no exception.  Grandpa Ellis likes to come with us too.  And I am glad because we like him and he makes breakfast.

Lila and Leisel spent most of their time hiding up on the side of the hill in their "secret hiding spot."

The kids love being out there.  We like to go up to my dad's property in Mantua.  It is nice and shady and private and there is a little river that is nearby.  It is great.

Fathers day was pretty good this year.  Molly decided to go big and bought me a big tv.  It is a nice 50" LG and it came with a blu-ray player and surround sound system.  It connects to the internet and we can watch netflix movies, and it connects to my home network and I can see all of my photos and videos.  I love it.  We watched Avatar on blu-ray the other day and it was incredible.  Now I can't stop watching tv.  But the tv didn't fit into our old tv cabinet so I had to build a new one.  I started out with these plans and made the cabinet a little bigger and added a top piece that goes around the tv to protect it from flying balls or shoes or whatever.

Molly chose the paint color and painted most of the cabinet.  I think it turned out great.  Looks almost as good as the tv.

And I guess I will end with a picture of Leisel and the first harvested blackberry from the blackberry bush we planted this year.  It is actually the only blackberry we have harvested this year.  But we have our fingers crossed that their will be more.

That is it for now.  More updates to the fascinating life of the Ellis family in a few months.

Spring Fever

Well not last weekend, but the one before that Molly had some girl conference at church that I had forgotten about and I was all psyched up to have a productive day so when she reminded me she would be gone, I decided that I needed to do something fun with the kids since I wouldn't be able to get the yard things done that I wanted to do while watching them. So I decided to take them to the zoo. That is always a crowd pleaser. Until we get there. Then Leisel and Lila just want to go to the playground and Zoe and Luke and I want to see some animals. And of course I try to say they can play when we are done looking at animals but the playgrounders just whine at me the whole time that they just want to play. I still had a good time though. It was pretty good weather for the zoo. Not hot at all, but sunny, light jacket weather. The little elephant is still everyone's favorite I think. Here is a picture of everyone trying to cram onto the fake elephants trunk. This wasn't my idea, by the way. I told them it would be too crowded. But obviously, I am not in charge anymore.
And here is Lila helping Leisel on the monkey chains at the playground that we eventually got to.

And here are Zoe, Luke, and Ethnie feeding the geese.

And here is Ethnie's first "Ethnie in the egg" picture. You can't really tell, but this is a giant egg that the kids like to sit in at the zoo park.

Well, the zoo was fun but on the drive home I decided to turn off at the Saltair exit and drive down past the marina on the Great Salt Lake to a big rock that just sits out there by the lake. I had never driven out there before and I just wanted to have a look at it up close. The kids loved it. They were all over that rock. I could not get them to come down once they realized the joys of rock climbing. It kinda freaked me out at first but then I relaxed and just let them climb.

Here is Leisel on the rock about halfway up.
And here are the rest of them near the bottom. I love Luke's new hands-on-hips pose.


And here they are on their merry way up to the top.


It was fun until they got to the top and where running around all over the place. Then I decided I had better leave the baby with Zoe (who left the others about halfway up to go back to safer ground) and go after them. Once I got up there with them and saw how close they were getting to the edge and how crazy they were being, running around all over the loose scree without a care in the world, I started having a bit of a panic attack and decided it was time to go see the lake. So I got them all down , which they learned is a lot harder than going up and we went out to the lake.

Here they all are sitting on the sand halfway between the water and the rock. You can see the rock in the background. I guess they all decided it would be fun to highlight the fact that they were sitting on sand, by holding a handful of sand out.

It was beautiful. Here are the older four walking out to the water.

And here is Ethnie hanging back to check out a cool rock.

And a couple more shots of them playing near the water.

And one more shot of the whole family (minus me) because they are cute.

Ok and one more of Ethnie playing Wii Fit because it is a fun picture and makes me smile.

So it was a fun little trip and we got to get some of our spring fever taken care of. Today it has snowed all day and there is about 4" of it outside. And it is still snowing and is supposed to snow tomorrow too. So much for spring. I guess that means I need to go snowboarding again. Maybe I will do that Friday night. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Flying Flashbacks Batman

I was looking for some glue for the kids and digging through a box of stuff when I found an envelope of old photos. They were mostly from when I was young and I had a good time looking through them. Then I found one where me and my sister Shelli had been flying with our dad and a friend of his in a little plane and it looked just like the picture I took of Lila and Zoe by the little plane. I thought it was neat. The two planes look almost identical. So here they are. Enjoy.

Halloween 2009

You might have already seen Molly's post on Halloween this year, but I wanted to post some more pictures. So here they are.

First is cute Ethnie in her Eeyore costume.
She is just so darn cute.

Here is Lucy in her lady bug costume.

Me and Luke in our pirate costumes.

Luke by himself.

Zoe in her Dorothy costume.

Lila in her cowgirl costume.

Leisel in her Belle costume.

We decided to paint pumpkins this year instead of carving them. We just weren't up for the mess and all the work of cleaning them out, so I just got out the paints and let them go to town. I think they liked it just as much as carving.
The costumes seemed like a lot of work this year. Well mostly Zoe's I guess. Molly made it all which took a lot of time. Who knew making a dress took so much time? And Molly couldn't find any gingham so she had to go with a straight light blue which just wasn't quite right so it was kind of a bummer to spend so much time making a dress that wasn't quite right even before she started. But I thought it turned out pretty good. She can be Alice in Wonderland next year with a change in shoes and hairdo. We bought Leisel's costume used and I sewed in a few metal hoops that Molly shaped up inside it so it would have a little more shape. When she first put it on, it just kind of draped limply on her. The hoops made all the difference I thought. Lila's wasn't too bad. We just took a pair of old jeans and cut them off at the butt and sewed on some fabric for a skirt. Found a hat at the dollar store. We looked for cowgirl boots at the DI for the few weeks before Halloween but never found any so she just wore snow boots I think. Luke's costume and my costume were pretty easy. That's why I like a pirate costume. It is easy to make. Just some old pants that you cut jagged, some cardboard and some duct tape for a sword and whatever shirt you want with a little fabric to make a belt and a head cover. I grew my hair out for the occasion. But now it is back to normal. And Ethnie's costume came from one of the sister-in-laws I think. It was a good time for most of us. A little too much work or stress for Molly to really enjoy herself, but I think mostly it was because she was sick. But she is fine now. The experience may have left her a Halloween grinch though and I may have to be the main sewist next year. Is sewist a word? I almost wrote sewer but that isn't right. Neither is seamstress. Maybe seamster? Well you know what I mean. I may have to do all the sewing next year.

Flying

Well, I found out that I guy I went to school with at the U (Wayne Crowther) has his pilot's license and so I thought it would be fun to take the older girls out for a spin in a plane and Wayne didn't mind playing along. Here are the girls in front of the plane that we went flying in.We started out at the Ogden Hinckley Airport and Wayne showed us how to do all the pre-flight checks on the plane and the gas and the weather. Then off we went. I decided to just have him give us a short flight because it is kind of pricey, so Wayne thought it would be good to fly up to Brigham City and back. That sounded great to me. So we got in and the girls were really excited, but they were being shy and quiet. It is kind of noisy in the plane and we all had headphones or earplugs in so we didn't talk much up there, but they seemed to like it. I was worried that Zoe would get sick because she gets motion sickness pretty easily, but she did just fine. Take-offs are pretty fun, but in such a small plane, I barely even felt it. We flew over Ogden and then over to the edge of the mountains. We stayed along the mountains looking at the pretty fall colors until we got to Brigham City. Wayne did a touch-and-go at the Brigham City airport where we came into the airport and touched down but then after going along on the runway for a few hundred feet, he just lifted off again and we turned around and went back to Ogden. On the way back we stayed west and flew over Willard Bay.It was a great flight and the girls really liked it. Wayne was a great pilot and the take-offs and landings seemed really smooth. Zoe has been asking me for years when I thought she would be able to go somewhere in a plane so I am glad we got the chance. And I am glad Wayne was happy to take us. Here is a picture with the girls and our pilot Wayne.
After the flight Wayne showed the girls his flight log and gave them their own mini-logs to write out the details of their flight. It was a good day. And when I think that Lila almost didn't come at the last minute because there was some thing in town were they had free hot dogs and she didn't think she would want to miss that. She was glad I convinced her otherwise. We stopped at the Burger Bar on our way home and that was way better than hot dogs.