We had a busy summer . We haven 't gone to Vegas for the Better Software Conference for a couple of years , but we went this year the week after school let out . Instead of limiting ourselves to one big show , we did two big ones and a little one . We saw The Beatles Cirque du Soleil show , the Blue Man show , and an animal show . The last one was a little disappointing , maybe our kids are too old . The end of June was our third annual trip to Oregon . The first year was so magical , the 2nd year was a little frustrating , partly because nothing could match the magic of the first year , but this year was solidly lovely . Some of us made it all the way to the top of the mountain we hiked , the little girls actually got Red to boogie board with them , we just had a great time . Right after we got back from Oregon I drove Blondie to Wyoming for her first real Horse Trial . She bobbled her dressage and was 8th of 8 girls in her division , which was very disappointing for her . They did Cross Country the 2nd day and she jumped the wrong jump - she jumped the higher one next to the one she should have jumped , and was given a " Technical Elimination . " However there was some miscommunication with the judges and they didn 't stop her like they should have , and she was able to continue on and finish the course . It was complete serendipity in our favor . Because it was a " technical " elimination she was able to petition to ride in the final round on the last day , so she got to ride the show jumping round , which was fun . She learned a lot . Blondie was of course hugely disappointed to be eliminated , but she took some comfort in the fact that five of the twelve riders in the group we came with from Park City were also eliminated , and only 2 of the 8 girls in her division ended up finishing , all the rest were eliminated . It was a tough course , but she did well and had a great time all in all . While Blondie and I were in Wyoming , Hubby flew to Dallas with Red to pick up his new car . He has been wanting to move up from the Passat for a long time , and has been looking for easily a year to find what car he wanted . He finally settled on a particular BMW and found one that matched and had to go pick it up . I have kind of put up with this because 1 ) we are calling this his mid - life crisis 2 ) he did earn it , sort of , by publishing his book . However I have been kind of mocking him , maybe quietly , I hope gently , because the car he settled on is a 2 door convertible . I have pointed out that we live in PARK CITY next to a SKI RESORT and he has TWO CHILDREN . He was undaunted . I voted we keep the Passat and he could just drive that to and from the airport , and garage the BMW . HIs reply was most weeks he 'd only drive it to and from the airport . He does make a good point . And then I drove the car . It is so much fun to drive , I had to shut up about it and while he 's been in Australia this week I have been driving the BMW on all my errands except to the barn . I will not drive that to the barn . 1 ) Paint Blondie 's room . The sample color patch has been on her wall for over a year . But I told her I 'm not just going to clean up her room , clean out her room , and paint it , without some help from her . It 's a decent but not monumental mess in there . She hasn 't seemed to want it bad enough to clean her room . So it didn 't get done this summer . 3 ) Finish up landscaping the front yard and plant the grass . This involved relocating some plants that I had planted too close to the existing grass line , and moving the grass line back much further back toward the house , and removing a whole bunch of Bishop 's Weed and planting the grass in the space to fill it in . I ACTUALLY DID THIS ! ! ! The grass is planted and little tufts are starting to come up . School started last week . Red is on the early bus , and leaves the house at 6 : 40 am . Blondie is on the late bus , and leaves the house at 8 : 26 am . I have found that there area several hours in the morning that I didn 't even know existed . I am certainly not naturally an outrageously driven or productive person , and I do not feel compelled to pack something into every minute of the day , but I have found this time in the morning to be a great time to get some things done so I have less guilt when I get less done in the rest of the day as I often do . Red is quite happy with her classes , she got most of the electives she requested and has been enjoying school well enough . She 'd rather stay home , of course , but she is resigned to it , she has some friends , and she is okay . Blondie was devastated that she does not have any of the friends she made last year in any of her classes this year . There are people she knows , but her little circle of friends are not in her classes . She is much less concerned with the actual classes themselves , for her it 's mostly about her friends . Since she 's been going for a couple days now I have discovered she does have friends in some of the classes , she tells me stories about this person or that person in her class who she knows , and I think she 'll be fine . The Fall Pumpkin horse show is this weekend . I should in fact be packing the car instead of blogging . I guess I better go do that . Before students in Utah can attend 7th grade , they must prove that they have received a barrage of immunizations . Or vaccinations . Or both , I don 't know the difference . Last year I took Red to the clinic and got her shots , but then when I went to register her for 7th grade they informed me her records showed she did not have the necessary vaccinations . I was very mad , I 'd gone to the trouble to get her to the doctor over the summer , and granted I forgot the list to wave in the doctor 's face , but good grief it 's a state requirement , shouldn 't they know ? I had to make an appointment with the clinic nurse for their next appointment , which was the next day , then rush her back to school afterward so she could register and get her laptop and her schedule . I made Blondie 's appointment right after school got out in June . She was very upset about getting the shots , but there 's not a lot we can do about it . They forgot to give me her proof of vaccination printout , so I had to go back and get one , but I was prepared . I went to register Blondie today armed with our proof of residence and proof of vaccinations . Imagine my alarm when the school nurse looked at my vaccination certificate and told me " You don 't have one of the vaccinations . I can 't register her . " " You are KIDDING MEEEE ! ! ! ! BAAAHHHHH ! ! ! " I had an appointment with the optometrist myself shortly to get some new contacts so before I raced off to that I called the clinic where I had taken Blondie in June to see if she really had gotten the shot and it just hadn 't made it to this print - out somehow , or if she really needed to get another shot . The secretary said she couldn 't find the info and the nurse would have to call me back . I raced to my eye appointment , where I got some bad news - an irregularity that I have on one eye I now have on BOTH EYES . Which means it is getting worse . Anyway . Not a huge deal now but something to watch , the doctor told me to go see a cornea specialist , and I was sorely disappointed in my body 's lack of ability to perform like a super hero . It has pulled through for me before , being very healthy and stuff , but today , well , today it failed . I picked out new glasses but my heart wasn 't really in it , I ordered " Daily contacts " because they are less likely to cause stress on my eyes , and came home somewhat defeated . We drove to the appointment and were a few minutes late because I made several copies of the paper the school nurse gave me indicating which vaccinations an incoming 7th grade student needs . When we checked in I gave them to the front desk lady and suggested she post them around because this was my 2nd time having to come back and get a vaccination that had been missed in the 1st appointment . Blondie could not believe I had actually given the copies to her . We were sitting in the waiting room , and finally a nice lady comes out and calls Blondie 's name , and comes over to tell us they are out of that vaccination . I remember thinking " I should close my jaw . I am sitting here with my mouth open , which is probably rude . " I flipped out . I was so mad and didn 't want to be caught crying . I don 't know why but I smacked my forehead dramatically three times with my phone . I was crying before I got to the car . I still am not sure why . I guess sometimes you have to act like a spoiled two year old . I sat in the car trying to get a hold of myself , Blondie was scared and asking what was going on , why was I so upset . I don 't know . I told her about my eye , and then she got upset and asked if I was going to go blind , no , well , I don 't think so , probably not , they can operate for this but they don 't like to operate on your cornea unless they absolutely have to . I googled the public health clinic and considered calling to make sure they had the vaccination but decided my voice would crack , so I drove Blondie over there to give myself time to calm down . Blondie was pretty stunned . I apologized for embarrassing her in the clinic , and told her I think I flipped out because I was afraid I might cry , and she told me crying might have been less embarrassing than smacking myself in the forehead with the phone . " Then everyone in the waiting room watching might have thought she told you you have some horrible disease or something . Hitting yourself with the phone just makes you look like a crazy person . " I calmed down on the drive and we made it to the public health clinic where I was informed that they did have the right vaccine but they don 't take my insurance . It would cost me $ 115 but I could probably be reimbursed by my insurance if I submitted the paper work . Fine . Get this over with . I should add that no less than three times while we were there I had someone ask to make sure we didn 't need the OTHER big vaccine for incoming 7th graders . No , thanks , our clinic already gave us that one but they 're NOT AS SMART AS YOU GUYS and they totally bungled the OTHER vaccine , which is why we 're here . It had originally been Red 's , as she is the big dragon fan , but Blondie had taken it when Red purged at one point . It has lived in Blondie 's room for a while , but it was purged quite a while ago . We could hardly believe it . Blondie figured it had come to her again , it was fate , so she chose Chubby as her prize . I told her she can 't ever give him up now . I decided to go visit my parents , 80 miles north , since I am the only one who really wants to do this anyway . I had a nice time , a couple of my mom 's brothers and their wives were also visiting , I got to see my sister , shop with my mom , it was a nice relaxing time as it usually is . Without the hassle of entertaining Hubby and the kids . Wednesday my mom and I went to Sam 's Club . Before we left I put the guinea pig on the grass so he could graze . I put the top of his cage out so he couldn 't run away , and put his igloo and water there too . When we came back I went to check on him and he had flipped his igloo upside down , and was lying limp on the ground gasping . I picked him up and raced him downstairs where it was cool , wondering if he had over heated . He did not seem to be improving . I called my sister and asked her where a good vet is , and raced over there . He had already died before I got there . They said without an autopsy , they couldn 't really determine the cause of death . They 'd have to ship his body out for the autopsy , and they 'd send me back the report and the cremated remains . That just seemed gruesome . They gave me a nice little cardboard casket , put a hand towel in the bottom , and laid the guinea pig on it . She closed his eyes for me . I came home that night and decided to put him in the fridge . Freezing him would have meant I had to cram his body into a zip lock bag , and make freezer space . I had room in the downstairs fridge to put him in his little casket box . I picked the girls up today and Blondie , whose pig this was , chattered all the way home , full of experiences to share from camp . As it was Red 's 2nd year , and she didn 't have some of the dramatic experiences as her sister , she was quieter . Hubby 's plane had landed and he had arrived home while I was picking up the girls but he had to get on the phone , so we told them we had some bad news as we were getting out of the car , so it ended up that we told them that the pig had died as we were all standing in the garage in front of the car . Of course Blondie was devastated , Red was sad too , as her pig had died this spring . Blondie went downstairs and sat on the storage room floor with the box on her lap , petting the pig and crying for about half an hour . We will have the funeral later , when Hubby gets off the phone . I started digging a grave in the back yard , next to Red 's pig 's grave . She was pretty nervous , and expected to not ribbon as she was competing against up to 19 year olds . The Junior Beginner Novice had the most participants in it , with 22 kids . I think I might have mentioned in a previous post , the scoring ends up being a lot about the dressage . If you can nail the dressage , and make it through the jumping rounds , you do okay . Bones and Blondie are really good jumpers , I think she rides him well , and I think he is really good about jumping most anything she can get him to . I think they are a little more wobbly at the dressage , but he steps out really pretty and holds his head nice , and they generally look good . I have a hard time with this in my head , because a lot of the time I give the horse a lot of credit . I think he is an excellent horse and we kind of lucked into finding him . He has a lot of experience and he knows his job and seems to be kind of paternal about it , and I think he takes care of Blondie . However , I think she does ride very well , and certainly does everything she can , and seems to listen to her instructors , who I do think are wonderful . Of course it 's not about who wins or doesn 't , it 's about how well you do against yourself . However it 's always nice to bring home a ribbon . My parents came down to watch , I kind of emphasized that this is probably the closest show she 'll do , and since it 's a mini event they can see everything in one day , so they made the trip . Because they were there , instead of mostly following Blondie and Bones around and running support for them , I kind of sat with my folks and narrated what was going on for them , and let Blondie kind of take care of things herself . Hubby spent more time shadowing Blondie . Because of this I got to watch more of the other girls in her division do their dressage , and I thought it unlikely Blondie could win against some of the better ones of them . But she 's had a couple of dressage lessons where the teacher has been working on the finer points of what they do , and I have to assume that these little details that I can 't even see must be what make the difference between a good rider and a great rider , because after the dressage round Blondie was in 2nd . They kept their 2nd place through the day - The only thing that would make them go up would be if the girl in 1st messed up , and of course they could have dropped if they messed up on the jumping rounds . But they didn 't . She came out in 2nd place and was tickled pink . This is her dressage . It 's hard to get good pictures , as they 're just kind of walking walking and trotting around . This is from her stadium jumping . I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to make the video of the cross country smaller so I could upload it . Apparently I am not technically savvy enough and I have run out of time for the day . Someday if I can figure it out , I 'll load it . Hubby broke hisself snowboarding on Sunday . He caught some air and fell onto his right shoulder , then went tumbling down the mountain . Somehow in the attempt to stop himself he whacked his right ankle . There was no one around . He boarded to the bottom of the run , where he finally got the attention of the ski patrol . The clinic on the mountain was really crowded , so he asked them to give him a ride to his car - despite my protests that I would drive up to get him - and drove himself home . From there , I drove him to the insta care clinic , where x - rays showed the ankle was cracked and he had a separated collarbone . You can see in the picture how the shoulder on the left ( his right ) has a hiccup in it , you can see the bump of the collar bone sticking up . The one on the right connects smoothly to the top of his shoulder . I had been texting the girls at home to reassure them and told Red there was now going to be a bump on Daddy 's shoulder . She was very upset to hear this and so I sent her the above picture . The conversation went like this : I was sitting in the clinic howling that she was totally okay with the bump , yeah , whatever , but OHMIGOSH DAD IS NAKED ! ! ! She told me later that she was worried he 'd lost his pants . Why she decided the above picture of his shoulders would indicate he was naked I do not know . Hubby ordered a boot off of Amazon , it came Tuesday and was much more convenient than having to wrap the ace bandages around the splint he received from the clinic . Also , the clinic put him on crutches and told him to put zero weight on that ankle . The crutches didn 't work at all , since using them to keep the weight off his ankle was pushing up on his separated shoulder . Hubby went to the doctor today , we held out for an appointment with the Sports Medicine guy instead of just a family practice guy . The ankle and shoulder should both heal 100 % . The worry was that he was causing further damage to his ankle by hobbling on it . He has pretty much just been hopping around , or walking on the heel of the boot . The doctor said hobbling on it will make it more sore , but it won 't damage anything as long as he uses the boot and doesn 't do anything stupid like snowboarding , gymnastics , or kick boxing . Hubby had to cancel his travel this week , and missed the first couple days of a whoop - de - do conference . He leaves tomorrow for the rest of the conference and refuses to use a scooter because he thinks only crazy Walmart shoppers use them , so he 's going to be hobbling around a huge conference center . In other news , Blondie and Bones participated in a Schooling Jumper show on Saturday . Since we / they are Eventers , not strictly Jumpers , this wasn 't completely their thing , but it is like one of the three events that Eventers do , the stadium jumping part . Since it was a schooling show , it ran behind , and there was a lot of sitting around . Even when you line up to go , you 're waiting and waiting , and there 's a lot of standing around . This is Blondie on the right , and her friend on the left . They 're making a heart with their hands . Jumpers are all about speed , though , and since Blondie and her friends were competing with women and horses who are all about the jumping ; who are racing around pell - mell and cutting all the corners , they were all kind of out of their league . However , some of them ribboned , Blondie and the other girl we came with both ribboned at the lowest level they competed at - cross poles , which was a pleasant surprise . Neither ribboned at the next level , and then because Bones has been a little stiff looking , the trainer suggested he and Blondie were done . I went up in the stands to watch . This is Blondie and Bones , in the middle of the picture , getting ready to go in for one of her rounds . Her friend is behind her , framed in that gate . The other little girl did one more level , but on that one it was getting even crazier and crazier with everyone jumping high and then zipping around to the next jump like their tails are on fire . But she did very well and didn 't knock anything over . If it would have been an eventing round , instead of a jumping round , both girls would have received zero penalties . Everyone had a fun day . Because Bones has been a little off , I went out on Tuesday to meet with the horse Chiropractor while Blondie was in school . He adjusted Bones and suggested she skip her lesson the next day and not ride him for a couple days . Since we usually go out on Thursdays , I went out with Blondie yesterday to work on his scratches , and found a new big patch that he won 't even let me touch . I think that might be why he 's been " off . " Blondie used her Zen thing to calm him while I worked on two of his feet . What makes this a neat picture is how picky he is about having his head even touched . He won 't tolerate his ears being touched , he doesn 't put his nose down to be petted . So to have him put his head down into her chest , and let me rip the scabs off his feet is pretty amazing . Our school district gives the kids a whole week off at President 's Day . We have spent most of those weeks visiting my parents , at a condo they rent in Oceanside , CA . Hubby always wants to go to Disneyland for at least a couple of days . We spend the rest of the time on the beach , or loafing around the condo and the area with my folks . Blondie has become a fan of the thick milkshakes at Ruby 's Diner at the end of the Oceanside Pier . Blondie spent two days on the boogie board . It was much warmer than usual , I actually went out with her and didn 't even have a wet suit . After her time in Oregon , Blondie has become a boogie board master . She even got Red out for an afternoon and the two of them really had fun . This year our Disneyland trip seemed especially magical . We spent two days at Disney and passed the night in Anaheim . The crowds were the lowest I 've seen in years . I assume it was due to the measles outbreak . I am opposed to other 's misfortune resulting in our benefit , but there isn 't too much I can do about it but benefit from it . So we did . The girls are old enough that we don 't even go into Storybook land or Toon Town , we mostly bounce between the rides they like . Thunder Mountain was open this year , which is a treat , because it often has been under renovation when we 've gone in the past . And Red rode every ride we pushed her to go on . Always before she has dragged her feet for Space Mountain , the Haunted Mansion , and Tower of Terror . Actually we didn 't get on the Tower this year , just timed it badly . But we went on everything else , though the California Screamer is her favorite . As we were walking around on the 2nd evening , the girls and Hubby were ahead of me and I saw this : I know it 's blurry and not the best shot but I think it is the first time I have seen my two girls just walking around being buddies like this . They are not very physically expressive toward one another . When one is feeling companionable toward the other , the other for one reason always seems prickly . To have them both feeling companionable at the same time is pretty unusual . He is a truly lovely horse . But he is an older horse . And there were some inherent problems with him going from being a yard ornament to being ridden six days a week by two different riders , one of whom was riding him pretty hard . We bought him in July , and by October this regimen had taken a its toll on his spine and he was limping . So the first person we called was the horse chiropractor . About this time the woman who half leases Bones ramped up her search for a horse of her own , and stopped riding bones altogether . She just looked farther and farther away for a horse . This is the horse chiropractor giving him some acupuncture . The Chiropractor adjusted him , at the tune of a couple hundred dollars , then of course no one could ride him hard for a couple of weeks . He was on " rehabilitation " which means pretty much half an hour of walking , no real trotting or cantering , and certainly no jumping . Then the Chiropractor came back to look at him and said that the adjustment problem was fixed , but now he was more lame than ever with another problem . The vet was at the barn that day and she looked at him and said it was probably the scratches . Backtrack a month or so . The woman who half leased him from us told me he had scratches on his feet . I thought so what , he got scratched somehow , it will heal . Whatever . Apparently SCRATCHES is the layman 's term for TERMINAL ATHLETE ' S FOOT of the horse . Sort of . It was awful ! $ 735 . 00 awful . It is this nasty condition that manifests itself as these scabs on the horses 's skin just above the hoof . Only happens on white feet , by the way , which is why some people will not buy a horse with white feet . The way to treat it is to rip the scabs off , and apply medicine of one sort or another . Bones 's scratches got pretty bad . His feet were all swollen and as he healed from the back problems his scratches got worse and they caused him to start hobbling again . I think Blondie was afraid she was hurting him when she would pick the scabs off , which she was , so she would pick very daintily at them . She gets off a little chunk the size of her pinky fingernail and that was about all the pain she wanted to put him through . So we called the vet to help . I went out to the barn and watched the vet attack them , and she drugged him up , then shaved off all the hair on his foot and the proceeded to shave off the scabs . It was horrifying . It bled . Then she put him in isolation in a stall , so he was out of the wet pasture . Being in a stall cost me $ 5 a day for shavings , and $ 10 a day to have someone else muck it out if we couldn 't get out to the barn that day . And of course Blondie wasn 't riding him . He HATED the stall . He started weaving again , and was pretty unhappy . After nearly two weeks in the stall he was able to go out into the cross country field , which isn 't as wet and muddy as the pastures , but still isolated . He was still unhappy . He was there for a couple more weeks , and then they decided it was dry enough and he was unhappy enough that he could go back into the pasture with the other geldings . This is what swollen feet look like after the scratches have been shaved off . Two weeks rehabilitation turned into four and six … She would be off him completely , or on for rehabilitation rides , but then his head would bob and she was off again and we 'd call the vet . She was basically off him for while he was being treated for one thing or another from the end of October until the middle of December . Then he got well enough to actually have a lesson . The scratches were doing better , until just before Christmas when she had a practice ride and his head was bobbing on the trot again , meaning he 's lame again . So she was off of him and we talked to the vet . The next time the vet decided his front feet were still not trimmed right , he was still out on his heels when he needed to be on his toes . So Blondie was not riding him while we wait for the ferrier to fix his feet , and for him to recover from being off on that . I took this picture when he was so frisky and excited to be out of the stall and back being ridden that he couldn 't contain himself . So finally by January he was back , and she had another lesson . The scratches were still there but getting slowly better . But now every time she rides him she is in fear of that head bob . Each time she rides , as we are graining him , I attack the scratches . He hates it . He pulls his foot out of the way , again and again . I move to the other foot . He has sometimes kicked at me with the opposite hind foot when I 'm working on the back one . We all hate it . In the mean time , with no one able to ride much , the woman who half leased him from us stopped leasing him from us . She was looking hard for a horse and stopped coming out to the barn . I had worried that for a long time Bones liked her better than he liked Blondie . She jumped him higher , she treated him more , she just loved the heck out of him . But around the middle of December she found her own horse . He was new and greener and needed a lot of work . So the woman who had leased from us was coming back to the barn but she totally focused on her own horse . There was one day toward the beginning of January when I came out to watch the vet work on Bones and this new horse was in the stall next to Bones 's . I was chatting with the woman who had been leasing from us while the vet ground down her horse 's teeth , and she told me she had gone into Bones 's stall to say hello . She said he took one look at her and turned his butt toward her , and then walked to the other side of the stall and put his head in the corner . He was shunning her . She said it was so obvious , such a different reaction than the one she used to get from him , it was very obvious he was mad at her . Of course , she said , that is the way it has to be , she is very happy with her new horse , and Bones needs to be in love with Blondie . I thought he would still love the woman who had leased him , who loved him so much , but he had moved on when she did . So Bones is back , Blondie has had a couple of lessons on him and they are jumping and everything again . We are still dealing with the scratches , but it 's much better , much smaller patches and I 've figured out a routine . I took this Tuesday , before my phone told me the memory was full and shut down . She jumped higher by the end of the night , but it 's on my other camera . Thursday we were at the barn and I decided to the scratches treatment a little different . Instead of waiting until he was cooled off and attacking the scratches while he ate his grain , I told Blondie let 's do the scratches while he 's cooling off . You can treat him just a little , can 't you ? She said she 'd keep him occupied . I don 't know if she was worried he was too hot to treat him or what , but she said she 'd stay by his head while I worked on his feet . It is impossible to work on his feet without something to distract him . I was picking at the scratches and noticed he was tolerating it . He stopped lifting his foot out of the way , stopped trying to get away from me . I commented on it , and told her to keep doing what she was doing . Finally I asked Blondie what was going on and she said " Shhhhh ! ! " She said she kind of put her forehead on his and just rubbed on his face and looked him in the eye … he would half close his eyes and she would just talk softly to him . She said when I talked his eyes would pop open and she 'd have to calm him down again . Now that I say that … there are other paintings my girls have done that I really really like . But today I 'm going to say my most favorite is the one we commissioned a friend of mine to do . I saw one she painted for someone else , and just loved it . So I contacted her about doing one for us , and she did ! She is just so cute about it , she came over and we measured the space above the fireplace to figure out how big it should be . She painted it pretty quickly , a mutual friend told me she fusses over them and works on them for a long time , but I think she did this in a couple of months . I really love it , I love that it 's impressionistic , and colorful , and that it 's aspens that we see up here a lot . She makes it very personal , and hides your initials in the painting . Mine I can pick out easily , everyone else 's I have to hunt for . She asked the girls to come paint on it . They put a lot of the red in it . She told me after that they are just the cutest , sweetest , loveliest girls ever … very complimentary of each other and just so darling . : - ) Shelly told me she touched it up after the girls finished , she said there was A Lot of red in it and she had to take some out . She said she didn 't want it to be obviously sunrise or sunset , and so it 's either . Which I like … Then I was on top of his chocolate - what he sends out to clients . Yay ! I feel like that got me started out right and I didn 't spend the rest of the holiday trying to catch up . Instead of laboriously writing our regular Christmas card , which combines a short humorous paragraph about each of us with a photo and a drawing done by one of the girls , all carefully squished into the required space and painstakingly printed by me , I slapped a couple photos into a Costco template , wrote a little sentence blurb about each of us , entered my credit card number and sat back to wait for someone else to do the work . It wasn 't nearly as charming and personal as our usual card , but it was SO MUCH LESS WORK ! We got a live tree this year for the first time in about ten years . I decided with the high ceiling of our house our fake tree ( which is about 7 feet tall and I really like okay under other circumstances ) just looks squatty and inadequate , so while Hubby was in Australia I took Blondie tree shopping and we picked out a lovely 11 footer in Salt Lake . The trees in the Park City lots were approximately three times as expensive . Getting it home up the canyon was an adventure , but Blondie and I prevailed and we got it up that night . It took three trips to Home Depot to get lights , with the brand new strings burning out , and me changing my mind about the size of bulbs we should have , but eventually we got it all up and it was just what I wanted and it is the prettiest tree we 've ever had . Our Christmas was the usual exercise in excess . The girls have moved from toys to … I still haven 't totally figured that out yet . Blondie is easier because she likes clothes , but needs a ton of horse stuff . So it 's not hard to get stuff for her . Red is harder . She doesn 't really like clothes , though she 's getting more flexible about what she 'll wear . I don 't hardly remember what she ended up with , she was happy , it was roughly the same amount and exactly the same number as Blondie 's ( I work pretty hard at that ) and her favorite gift was the XBox from Santa anyway . About that … Hubby told me I need to have The Santa Discussion with the girls . My family have always been Believers . Long before we came into the picture my mother made it eminently clear to my father that Santa would fill her stocking every year or else ! So I am in the Believer Camp … But it was getting to be problematic that the girls would be shopping with me and I needed to pick something up , and I needed to not have to be so absolutely careful about what ended up in their stockings . Also Red is 13 and she is very earnest and I don 't want her to be mocked by her friends . So when I was tucking Red into bed I started up the conversation and asked her what she says when her friends talk about Santa . She told me they don 't . I told her a good thing to say if it comes up is that in our house Santa comes if you believe , and she 's not an idiot . Just like that , I made her practice . She seemed to remain pretty earnest . So I took it a step further and I told her a round about way that Santa has helpers . Moms and Dads fill in because , you know , that 's a lot of houses . She nodded and accepted this readily . But I kept getting the impression that she wasn 't buying it , or rather she 's not letting go . She 's farther into the believer camp than I sort of intended to leave her . I avoided coming right out and getting up in her face with the harsh reality , and she avoided letting go of the magic . So I let it stay there . Then just before Christmas I was shopping with Blondie and we walked by a table that had candy at a very low price … and I was thinking , Dang , now I have to come back to this store when she 's not with me and get some of that candy . We went deeper in the store and I saw something else I wanted to put in Hubby 's stocking and I picked it up and I was looking at it , and I was looking at her … and I said " Honey , so Santa has helpers . . . " And she said " Mom , I know you help out Santa . You 've told me that like eight times . " So I said " Go get that big bag of M & Ms off the table by the door . And a hand full of those candy bars . " She doesn 't seem nearly as entrenched as Red . Hubby did some of the basic stocking shopping this year , which explains the appearance of of the Cheese Elf . The Cheese Elf , who left everyone a wheel of Laughing Cow or some other dairy like non - refridgerated cheese spread product , seemed to confuse the girls . They handed over their cheese wheels with looks of " I don 't know what this is doing in my stocking , " and " I think this was given to me by mistake . " He traveled with is friend , the Sausage Elf , who left some jerky and a vinegary little sausage in our stockings . The girls were not impressed but never questioned the source of these bizarre new stocking items . They just passed them into the family pile . We had a very relaxed and magical Christmas . It turned out mostly by accident that Hubby and I each had the same number of gifts as the girls . We open in a regulated order one at a time , and usually the girls have more than the adults and we skip a few rounds at the end , but this year we all somehow had the same . We have been relaxing and playing over the break . Lots of just pajama days and playing on the XBox . Hubby 's been doing quite a bit of snowboarding , just going up for a couple of runs most days . This year we decided to put both of the girls on skis . Two years ago when Red broke her wrist snowboarding she decided to abandon snowboarding and went to skis last year . Blondie stuck it out on the snowboard another year , some of it was solidarity to her father but in general she was afraid of it and she and I spent a lot of time last year on the bunny hill just going slow and getting her comfortable . Which also worked with Red as she was basically teaching herself how to ski while I was busy helping Blondie . I thought they both had improved a lot , especially under the circumstances of being taught by me , then Blondie broke her arm in March , right at the end of the season . So this year we put them both on skis , and decided to put them in a lesson over the break . So on New Year 's day we all went skiing ( Hubby snowboarded ) and put the girls in full day lessons . We got to the mountain about the time we should have , but I didn 't realize I had to check them in at the ticket window . I 'd bought everything on line , I thought I could just march them up to the ski school . Blondie was very nervous . Very very nervous to the point of making herself sick . Red seemed pretty calm , she had enjoyed skiing the year before and was mostly worried she 'd be older than everyone else . But once I got them signed in , most of the other classes had left . We told the people there that despite Red having a year of skiing over Blondie , the two of them wanted to be placed in the same class . We left , hoping the two of them would be attached to a smaller class of older kids and not a big class of kindergarteners . As we were leaving we saw the two of them were just standing there alone , and then a woman came over and we watched for a little bit as she helped them struggle to put their skis on . We figured there 's nothing more we could do , so we went off to have as much fun as we could . Around lunchtime we got a text from Blondie that said ; " Having a ton of fun ! can 't wait to tell u all about it : ) " Whew ! ! ! It was much easier to enjoy ourselves after that . We had three hours left to ski before we picked them up at 3 : 00 . Hubby and I like similar runs , though he likes powder and I don 't , so we do pretty well together . We had quite a bit of fun , though I wiped out bad once and I think cracked my left thumb . It will now match my right thumb , which I broke a chip off of skiing in high school and it doesn 't bend all the way anymore . When we went to pick the girls up , it turned out they had had a private lesson , just the two of them with the teacher . The teacher immediately started telling us how precious and what treasures the girls are . She told us what a joy they are to teach , how they listen , and respond , and are way ahead of a lot of kids that just start . It made me wonder what sort of little hellions she usually has to put up with . She said a lot of new students have a hard time grasping the fact that the skis slide on the snow . We suggested that their history of snowboarding might have helped with that , she added that they also have great balance and body sense which might be attributed to the horse back riding . I didn 't feel it necessary to interrupt her gushing about how marvelous our kids are to point out only one has spent much time doing that . She said because it was just the two of them and because the girls listen and respond so well , they were able to advance through two full lessons , and the girls are now level three skiers . They are working on " linking turns " and can go on gentle green runs . Blondie said skiing is sooo much better than snowboarding . She had more fun before lunch , afterward they started going faster and she got scared and started falling down more . But all in all had a really fun day . Red was very positive about it but doesn 't bubble the way Blondie does . She had fun , and was all smiles , and that 's about all I got out of her . I have been taking Christmas down for the past couple of days , today we took the tree out to the front yard to await its ride to the drop off point , and moved all the furniture back into place . Only one more day of Christmas break , and the girls are just sick that school will start again . Hubby leaves tomorrow for … somewhere . He was going to take January off but has just been so busy , he 'll only end up with about a week off . The book is selling great , at one point this week it was in the top 6000 Amazon selling lists . Which is marvelous .