Write My Life

All in one day in California….

12:35 p.m. outdoor at the beach

6:06 p.m. outdoor ice skating

Gotta love it!

The fresh snow was perfect for building a snowperson. We easily rolled up the snow in the parking lot for our snowman base.

We scrounged around for personal materials, finding twigs, broken branches and orange peels.

Our snow person was famous! The sheriff drove by and said it was the best snowman he’s seen in a long time. Then, some other people came by and had their picture taken with *our* snow person.

These fun and creative girls of mine came up with something new to do with the sleds this winter. While sledding, they decided to try sledding while standing up. It was very difficult with lots of falling, but also very funny. They each experimented with style and technique. The girls thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of seeing how long they could stay standing. I think the record was under 10 seconds.

With an unexpected turn of events, we went to Yosemite the last weekend of January. Our goal? To play in the snow, of coarse! But when we got to our hotel, Tenaya Lodge, on Friday night we found very little snow. It was disappointing in a way, but we decided to make the best of it.

On Saturday, we drove to Yosemite and went snowshoeing. The snow, though, was so hard packed that we really didn’t need the snowshoes except in a few areas. During the 2-mile snowshoeing hike both girls got tired and upset. It really wasn’t turning out the be a great snow trip. After we got back to the hotel and swam in the pool things calmed down quite a bit.

Sunday morning dawned and we got the one thing really needed to make it a great vacation – fresh snow! With a couple of new inches of snow, we headed to a snow play area. It was a dream! The girls had such a blast sledding down a little hill. The snow was also perfect for throwing snowballs and building a snowman. 4 hours later, we left the snow play area with 2 very happy girls.

With soccer season over, Jackie finally had the time and opportunity to take horseback riding lessons. She began riding in late December at Shoestring Farm in Portola Valley. Jackie immediately enjoyed riding on her horse. She quickly learned to lead, walk, trot and walk with her horse Weasel. At each lesson, she had the opportunity to work on tacking and grooming Weasel as well.

Unfortunately, at her 5th lesson as she was beginning to canter for the first time, Jaclyn fell off her horse. She didn’t get back on the horse because her arm hurt too much. The next day when she couldn’t lift her arm, we took her to the doctor. An x-ray showed a fracture to the humerus. She spent several weeks in a sling and, according to the doctor’s orders, out of horseback riding for six weeks. Despite her injury, Jackie is determined to return to horseback riding.

Due to scheduling around school and Christmas we ended up leaving for Chicago on Christmas Eve and returning on New Year’s Eve. It was so late a return on Christmas Eve that we literally drove into the driveway about 11:15 p.m. and rolled right into bed. I think, between reading the mail and getting stuff into the house, I was awake at midnight. It wasn’t very glamous, though.

On New Year’s morning our tree was still up and there were still presents under it. We had left a few of the biggest items at home. The girls got up and immediately wanted to open their remaining presents.

Jennifer was especially gratefully to Jackie for giving her the Polly Pocket set she wanted for Christmas. I was grateful for the scrapbook the two girls had secretly made for me!

While in Chicago, Mike’s parents treated us to an afternoon at the 11th century Medieval Times. Since both the girls are in such a “horse loving” phase right now, it seemed appropriate. True enough. The parts they enjoyed the most were the dressage and other horse events.

Wenches and serfs delivered our food (no utensils!) of garlic bread, hot vegetable soup in pewter bowls, roasted chicken, a spare rib, a seasoned potato and pastry.

We sat in the section of the red knight and the girls cheered wildly for them. Jackie was so attached to her knight that she hid behind me when he was fighting. She didn’t want to see him lose. The show contained plenty of action. The tamer contests included the flag toss, ring pierce and a javelin throw. The more tense contests charge each other on horse with lances. When a rider is knocked out, the battle continued on foot.

All in all, a pleasant event and a fun thing to do on a cold Chicago day.

It’s Christmas and one present everyone received in common was this one thing: books. As part of relaxing over the Christmas holiday, we all reached for our new books and read them. Mike’s mom snuck this picture of us one day on vacation:

Games. Games. Games. The Gormish family loves games. So, get them together and what do you get? Lots of games! One of the favorite games of this vacation was Apples to Apples. In the game the “judge” chooses a favorite card. Jennifer reveled in choosing the perfect card. If you asked her to hurry up and make a choice she would say, “I’m thinking.”

With no snow in sight, we were able to drive to Indiana to see my dad. The girls enjoyed opening their giant stockings. They picked out each item one at a time, examining everything. They had several packages to open as well.

As usual with any visit to my dad’s house, we ate a large lunch and took a walk to the small town playground.