Also on the library schedule I found information about free language programs they offer on their website. I haven't been able to find a free app/program that offers Mandarin Chinese, but their Mano languages does. So I've been doing a few lessons. After one lesson I tried saying something to Lila and she just looked at me and said, "I have no idea what you are saying." When I told her in English she said, "Oh, you say it like this." Guess I still have a lot of work to do. Steve also found that it had Russian on there and he took the placement test, but it still placed him in the beginning course (it's been along time since his mission when he spoke Russian), but it should be a fun little learning thing for the two of us.
Friday, Andrew and I drove up to play with Anson for a bit before Jake & Marcee left (they came up to celebrate their anniversary). Mimi asked if Andrew could stay so I left him. Then Steve and I decided to go to the temple that evening so we put Marcus down for a short nap leaving the girls in charge and headed to Bountiful knowing Mimi & Grandpa were on their way down to be with the kids. Grandpa said when he went to tuck the girls in Lila was giggling and said, "Oh Grandpa we were just laughing and laughing and cracking our heads together."
Grandpa, "Are you ok? You weren't really cracking your heads together?"
Lila, "No Grandpa, it's an idiom."
Grandpa, "Mimi google what an idiom is." :)
Then we took the girls skiing at Powder Mountain on Saturday. It was a great day of skiing. The girls were doing great. I was doing better on my new skis and I could barely keep up with the girls on occasion. They have a couple of new lifts where Steve and Ellie skied through some powder. Ellie said, "Oh Dad, you've ruined regular skiing for me now." And when she fell in the powder she laughed and said, "That was so awesome so light and fluffy." I really love going there. Steve and I have decided we'd rather drive to Powder Mountain than ski Snow Basin. Grandpa Stan was supposed to come with us, but had a rough night and decided to stay with Mimi and our little boys. Grandpa took Andrew sledding which I am grateful for because he really wanted to go skiing with us. So much so that he put on his snow pants and carried around his helmet. I told him he was going sledding with Panca (what he calls Grandpa Stan) and he said, "No. How about I go skiing with Dad, Mom, Ellie, & Lila." Almost broke me, but we still left him.
Sunday we had a little family dinner and I made cupcakes to celebrate Grandpa's birthday.
I had proposed the idea of us all going to Nordic Valley on Monday and do some family skiing and it was well received so we went to hopefully give Mimi a chance to get comfortable on her skis, Andrew a chance to ski, and the four girl cousins some skiing time. It was a good trip. Ellie & Lila just went up and down the lift (they were sad we didn't do the big lift, but when I asked them earlier they didn't want to and then when they decided they wanted to it was time to go home to Marcus and relieve our babysitter). Andrew skied for 3 hours. Steve was really tired from snowplowing with him. He doesn't quite get turning and his skis may be a little big so we're going to look at the ski swap next year, but he did not want to stop.
Tuesday we debated going to Snow Basin (we're trying to use Ellie's 5th grade passport and Lila has a season pass there) and probably would have if Grandpa and Mimi had stayed in town, but alas he had other commitments. So I took the kids to the aquarium, ran a couple of errands, picked up some lunch for us all to enjoy.
The girls also did an accelerated course on code.org this weekend for the new coding club at Heritage. I was really happy to see them excited to work on it and the interaction they had with Steve while doing it.
I asked them what their favorite thing we did this weekend was and they said all of it, but when I made them pick one Ellie said, skiing, Lila said, coding, Andrew said skiing.