Vroom is for dump truck (that's good enough for me)

Benjamin's been doing "homeschool preschool" this year but, to be honest, we haven't done very much of anything remotely formalized. We've done nearly eight months of "big brother training camp" but not a whole lot of academic training. That's probably okay because...he's three.

When his sisters went back to school, though, he importantly boasted that we'd be doing "homeschool preschool," too, so he'd better get to bed so he could get up in the morning, too. He hadn't forgotten about his claim in the morning, so I indulged him and went over a few pages in a workbook with him and found out: the boy is clueless.

Chances are high he knows more than he's letting on and simply enjoys infuriating me more than getting answers correct. I had another child like that once (*cough* Rachel *cough*).

"Let's sing the alphabet," I said.

"Can't," he shrugged.

"Sure, you can," I said.

"Don't know how," he shrugged.

"Sure, you do. What letter does the alphabet start with?"

"Start."

"No. What's the first letter of the alphabet?"

"Uhhhh...doi-dah."

"Come on, that's not a letter. You know how the alphabet goes! Won't you sing it with me?"

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18...6!"

"Those are numbers."

"Mom, those are letters."

"No, they're not. They're numbers."

"Letters."

"Stop."

Last day on Beech Mountain (January 9)

Our last day was mostly spent packing up and driving home. Here's Benjamin posing in the bedroom closet:

Beech Mountain, day 2 (January 8)

We woke up in the morning to someone else cooking breakfast, which is always a sign it's going to be a good day. The Harts made a French toast casserole. I totally don't mean to be obsessing about food, but we seriously ate so many good things (because I wasn't the one in charge of cooking; I can only put so much effort into only so many meals per day and/or week so sometimes (at least once a week day our family suffers through not-so-well-planned meals)).

After breakfast we hung out around the cabin waiting for the rain to stop and then had lunch (French dip sandwiches (apparently French food was a trend for the day), which Andrew and I made (mostly Andrew; I cut vegetables though so...)) and got ready to go sledding again. It's one of the cheaper (read: free) things to do on Beech Mountain (read: tourist trap ski resort) so we did it every day.

It was a little colder than Thursday and a thick cloud had settled on the ski hill; it was so thick we could hardly see the top of the hill from the bottom. We (parents standing at the bottom of the hill) seriously could not see the children standing at the top of the hill. We'd be like, "Where's so-and-so?" And then someone would say, "Gee, I dunno. Maybe they went back up the hill." And then we'd wait to see who would come popping out through the cloud. We're lucky we didn't lose anybody (it's a small ski hill).

Here's a picture of someone (Rhett?) crashing on a sled and Callin (for sure) reaching out to...save them? I don't know what he's doing, really.

Beech Mountain, day 1 (January 7)

Andrew and I started talking about this trip in secret weeks ago. My friend Marian emailed to see if we wanted to head up to the mountains the last week of intercession and we were on the fence about whether or not we'd be able to, but ultimately—obviously—we decided to join in on the fun and I'm so glad we did! We didn't tell the kids though; we packed everything into the van on Wednesday night after the kids were asleep. We woke them up on Thursday morning and told them to eat breakfast, get dressed, grab a book, and hop in the van.

It was a great surprise!

We spent three days and two nights on Beech Mountain—"the highest incorporated town east of the Rockies" at 5506 ft—in a beautiful cabin filled to the brim with seven adults (Annie's husband had to work) and fifteen children (eight and under):

Two eight-year-olds.
One seven-year-old.
Three six-year-olds.
One five-year-old.
One four-year-old.
Three three-year-olds.
One two-year-old.
One eleven-month-old.
One nine-month-old.
One seven-month-old.

Bedtime was one serious game of whack-a-mole! But everyone always had someone to play with and they all got along so well!

We headed straight to the visitor's center to hit up their free sledding hill. It was around 50°F (10°C) and they haven't gotten much snow this winter (yet—I hear they usually get around 90 inches, though in 2014 they only got 55 inches (for Utah-reference, Park City got 263 inches in 2014 (which rivals Lake Louise or Sunshine Village in Banff for Albertans reading this))) but they have a snow gun nearby and they happily produce their own snow so that everyone will come visit and spend money on their mountain.

I must say, I'm a fan of fake snow. All the fun without all the cold.

We had a great day that first day on the slopes. The hill is only for children under 12, but if you ride with a little kid adults can go, too, so the grown ups all had their fair share of fun (there were plenty of children in our group to ride with).

Against my better judgement ("if you don't take her down, I will" he said; "just do it" he said; "it'll be fine" he said) I took Zoë down the gentlest little slope, hit a bump, flipped around in the air, and landed hard on my side to break Zoë's fall. I'm a lovely shade of purple, but the baby is fine.

We stuck to teeny weeny slopes after that and spent a lot of time simply exploring the snow. That was more Benjamin's speed, though he did go down the big hill a couple of times with either Andrew or me.

Ready for way too many pictures of us sledding? Here we go!

Zoë: My Baldest Baby

Okay, Crystal, this post is for you! I took pictures of Zoë while she was eating because that was the only way I could get her to stop craning her head around so she could bat at the camera.

We seriously go back and forth about what colour this girl's hair is everyday. Sometimes it looks light and other times it looks dark. She's still super bald on top—so perfectly bald, right up to about the middle of her head. And then her hair is so sparse that it looks lighter than it actually is (at least, that's what I keep telling myself because I'm on Team Brown (though we'll love her with whatever colour of hair she develops)).

Happy New Year

The older girls stayed up until midnight reading, watching shows, and playing games.

Quick Trip to Raleigh

We went on a quick field trip to Raleigh on Saturday, first picnicking in front of the State Capitol Building and reminiscing about our first trip to the capitol when Benjamin was just ten months old. We had to take a picture of him sitting by the cannon, just to show how much he's grown.

It's still weird to me that we're still here. We're able to say, "Look at my little boy sitting by this cannon in 2013. Now look at my little boy sitting by this cannon in 2016." All of that and not a single move in the middle. We've lived here almost twice as long as we've lived anywhere in our whole married lives. I suppose it won't technically be twice as long until August. But still. This is a long time for us.

Teething

Zoë and I spent an impressive twelve hours sleeping last night. That twelve hours was punctuated by a nursing session every couple of hours, but we spent the bulk of that twelve hours sleeping. Zoë didn't wake up screaming...and stay up screaming for hours on end. It was lovely.

We've spent several consecutive days screaming until all hours of the night. Two o'clock. Three o'clock. Four o'clock.

We've done teething gel.

We've sucked on ice cubes.

We chewed everything in sight.

Nothing really seems to help for long.

She's got four teeth trying to come through simultaneously. On the one hand, at least we'll get four out of the way at once. On the other hand, that's four times the pain, four times the screaming, all at once.

Sitting up

Zoë's getting so close to crawling that I'm sure she'll be speeding around the house in the next couple of days. For now she remains frustrated that she can't get where she wants to go. However, she seems to have mastered a different trick this evening—sitting up.

For the record, I left her on her back after a diaper change. I returned after taking care of her diaper to find this:

All her siblings are sleeping (let's not talk about Zoë's sleeping "schedule," okay?) and Andrew said he didn't help her so she somehow managed to sit up by herself.

I almost doubted whether I left her on her back or not until she tipped over onto her stomach...but then ended up back in a sitting position a few minutes later. I've been watching her to see how she does it but so far she's just been spinning circles around the living room and backing herself into corners and then crying about it because she so badly wants to control her whereabouts. Sitting up on her own is a pretty cool trick, though, I guess.

New Year's Eve, take 1

I'm sure we'll take more pictures of our late night festivities as well (then again, we might not), but here are some pictures of the day from before 9:30 (when we rang in the New Year with King Benjamin).

The first thing we did today was sleep in, big time. I woke up just before 10 am and everyone was still sleeping. It was eerie, but I'm not going to complain about it because I think we all needed a good wake-up-when-ready day.

Once we were all up and at 'em, Daddy took Benjamin grocery shopping while the girls and I took down the Christmas decorations. I had to take a picture of this branch: