Monday, March 19, 2007

Sunny Ski Day at Tahoe


I went up with the kids for the last ski day of the year on Saturday. It was about 80+ in Folsom and about 57 up at the ski resort. I felt overdressed withwhat I was wearing and it felt good to get into shorts and flip flops at the car.

Blake and Cece had a really good first year snow skiing. Blake is able to go down the bunny hill himself, he didn't want me to help him at all. Cece still needs some help, but I think she had enough fun to continue next year. At the end of the day, my friend, Scott, and I took the kids out early and went on the chair lift. It was such a thrill to them and they made their dad proud as they got on and off without incident.

Unfortunately, I am reminded each year that I am getting older and more out of shape. After a couple of bumps, my knees and back hurt and I am ready for the blues again.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Cecilee's Birthday Party


We are very grateful to you for sending Cece birthday greetings. Here you will see her very willing to pose for the camera in her "Birthday Girl" shirt. I think she has had that shirt for over 6 months. I don't know where Mom hid it, but it has managed to stay clean. We celebrated her and her cousin's (Tyler) birthdays yesterday at our house. She had fun opening up all her girl presents, while Tyler was just happy getting CASH. It was a beautiful day, about 77 outside, so the kids mostly played out front.

It seems we have a new Petersen family birthday tradition involving a pinata. We didn't want to break the trend, so we hung it out front on our underdeveloped tree. It worked fine, but we realize that with the next pinata we will need to blindfold the older boys as they are starting to play baseball and getting pretty destructive with the bat.

Afterwards, Rebecca had a lot of fun with a fun game of musical chairs. It was fun to see the kids dancing around the chairs as they waited for the music to stop. We had a few tears as some found themselves without a chair, but then they got their goodie bags and it didn't take long to recover.



Here you can see that Mom (and Dad) treated Cece to a manicure and pedi for her birthday. She picked a lovely shade of pink and got a flower on her big toes and thumbs. She was obviously pretty excited.


I didn't have a birthday party shot of Jesse, but this was a cute one. Jesse was pretty involved during the birthday party. He was very excited to take his turn whacking (tapping) the pinata with a stick. The happiness turned into a stomping, ragging bull when Mom tried to move him out of the way. Mom was able to restore order with a sucker. Jesse is also getting to the right height to just see over the top of the table to see what is going on. You can just see a couple of eyes peering over and then a little hand reaches up to retrieve some frosting.

As I mentioned, Blake is starting T-ball for the first time this year. He is on the Blue Jays. At first he wasn't very excited about the idea, but he warmed up to the idea after I told him I would be his assistant coach. On Saturday he had his first training in drills. He may have been more excited about the donut and candy bar, but he has been very excited about practicing every night that we are home. He has his first "unofficial" official practice in one of the parents backyards tomorrow. The coach has played college ball and has taught summer camp to youth, so I look forward to learning from him. I am just glad Blake is enjoying playing and having fun with the kids on the team.