Marchie's World

We are officially bribing our daughter, with M&M's no less, to motivate her to be more consistent in using the potty. She can totally do it, she just choses not to when it is convenient for her.

Immediately following explaining the new system to her (1 for pee, 2 for poop), she went in and peed and pooped. We have always told her if she has 3 days straight without 'going' in her pull up, then she can have big girl underwear, she just never makes it that far. I usually taunt her with it whenever we see underwear in the store too, but to no avail. We considered using a sticker system, but I think she just doesn't value them enough. She gets a whole strip of them at the store and immediately starts sticking them on everything (usually herself), and off, and on, and off, and on. "Mommy! This sticker won't stay on!" Can't imagine why (LOL)....

Well, we'll see how this goes. I have a friend who was relating to us how he used a similar system for his son, and eventually he figured out that if he didn't push it all out at once and just 'reserved' some and spread it out, he would get more reward in the longrun. Hopefully Rachel doesn't figure that out anytime soon. Besides, this is a system designed to be only used for the short term. I'm just waiting to see if it effects her sleep schedule by giving her sugar right before bedtimes (she regularly goes right before nap and bedtime).

It's a proud day for us as parents (oy).

Well, we successfully made it to CA, traversed the state a bit, skiied at 4 different Tahoe-area ski hills on 6 different days (well some of us did), and reversed the first bit of our trip, all without going (too) crazy.

We arrived in Sacramento on Saturday afternoon after having a *slight* delay coming out of Detroit for de-icing. We got our rental without incident, and were pleasantly suprised to find a navigation system at no additional charge. We wound up with a Chevy TrailBlazer, which didn't seem to be too much of a space problem for the five of us (Me, Archie, Rachel, Arch and Nan), but I couldn't tell you for sure, as I think I almost always drove. We drove to Grass Valley (complete with a pitstop at In N Out Burger), a little over an hour away, and checked into the Holiday Inn Express for the night. Then we headed over and visited and had dinner with my grandmother at her favorite little restaurant, Margarita's.

After a nice night's sleep (we all absolutely CRASHED by 9pm) we had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel, we joined my grandmother for her Easter church services. Then afterwards we ate lunch, said good bye to "GG" (Great Grandma) and headed off to Lake Tahoe.



We stopped at the Emerald Bay lookout on our way around to South Lake Tahoe.



We just relaxed for the rest of the evening and celebrated Emma's 9th birthday.

Monday through Friday basically went the same every day with little exceptions.
Monday - Everyone went to Alpine Meadows for skiing (Nan, Martha and Rachel didn't ski), then home for dinner and relaxing.
Tuesday - Arch, Archie & Anne went to Heavenly for skiing while Nan, Martha and the little girls stayed home for sledding and a day off from skiing. Woody had to go back to the bay area for a meeting, then was back that evening for more dinner and relaxing, with one exception. Emma's classmate spent the night (her family was also in the area over the break) with plans to join us for skiing the following day.
Wednesday - Another group day at Homewood Ski Resort, and then out to dinner at a wonderful Thai restaurant in South Lake Tahoe.
Thursday - "The boys," Arch, Archie & Woody went to Squaw Valley for skiing while all of the girls stayed home for another day of resting and playing. We managed to find the local public pool and do a little swimming.
Friday - We all made our way back over to Alpine Meadows (this is the most family friendly hill we have yet found out there) with a different kind of plan for the day. We heard through the grapevine that Alpine had very small ski boots for little kids to wear. This is different than most hills, where the boots don't even start until around size 9, and Rachel, being so small is only a size 5, so we've never gotten a chance to really "try" Rachel on skis. Also, she had been very jealous of everyone else getting to go all week... it was yet another "when I get older..." to add to her list. Well, we took her out (on their absolute smallest skis and boots) with very low expectations. We just wanted her to put them on and have her move a little bit (much like sledding, which she loves), and if she did more, all the better. Well, I am going to just going to leave you with this... she loved it, and far exceeded our expectations. Archie said he will write a separate blog to describe the event further. I think we picked up pizzas for dinner this night.

I made the declaration that there would be no skiing for anyone on Saturday, lest my husband allow his body to completely break apart at the seams from so many days of skiing in a row (not to mention his poor father who is just as much of a glutton for punishment as he is when it comes to skiing). So the entire family went out to Pope Beach to soak up a little of the lake and let Kira (the Delp's dog) run a bit, then out for a nice lunch at a local diner.



Sunday we all had one more day at Homewood then spent the evening getting ready for our return trip the next day.

Monday turned out to be a reeeeeally long day (longer than expected) due to a flight delay because of terrible thunderstorms in Chicago (where our connecting flight was). We walked in the door around 3am and promptly went to bed. Poor Archie had to work the next day. Oy.

Check out more pictures and videos of our trip on our smugmug site (though I'm still straightening them out somewhat).