EWU rock climbing

 Rachel and Connor both want to attend EWU this fall.  So, we planned a family day to check out the campus.  I took Connor and Rachel and Jason took Kaiden and Alex.  First we checked out their rec center. We were going to try ice skating, but there was a hockey match going on, so the 4 kids did the rock climbing wall instead. They all had fun.  Connor actually made it to the top too!  He's scared of heights so that's an accomplishment! Alex and Rachel did several climbs too, but had to stop due to their fingers hurting.  Kaiden had the most fun.  His hands hurt, but that kid would have kept climbing all day if we had let him.  Afterwards, Jason took Kaiden and Alex back home while I explored the campus with Connor and Rachel. It was cold and snowing, but we walked all over campus and got a good layout of the buildings and then had some lunch at their cafeteria. 

Mt. Spokane Ski

We spent the day skiing at Mt. Spokane. We're not impressed with their ski lifts though. Connor and Jason went to the top and did a few runs, but it was foggy and a little bit icy so they spent the rest of the day on the lower slopes with Kaiden and I.  They have very old 2 seat ski lifts, with a small 1-2 inch lip on the edge of the seat and 1 pole in the middle.  Connor is already scared of heights, so he really didn't like these lifts. The seats are close together and move fast so we had a few issues with getting in place fast enough with the kids. They don't slow down the lift to let inexperienced skiers get on safely, although I did watch them almost stop the lift for several ADULT snowboarders, but when I asked them to slow it down a bit to get Kaiden on they wouldn't. The beginner hill is pretty small.  We did find a cool side trail that starts towards the top of the mountain and winds from one side to the other with a gentle slope. That was fun. We did that run at least 6 times.  Kaiden also enjoyed the ski terrain park and did that at least 6 times. All of us did do one run from the top together. There were a few pretty steep spots that Kaiden wasn't super thrilled with, but he did great.  Overall they have quite a few nice runs and it's nice that it's so close to home. Our only complaint is the crappy ski lifts.

Altitude Trampoline Park

 I took Kaiden and Alex to the trampoline park to burn off some energy for 2 1/2 hours.

January Fun

 The boys put the Lego Mandrake together for me.  We went to the running start orientation night.  Connor wants to attend EWU next year.  He's still leaning towards an Engineering degree.  We also signed him up for Drivers Ed because he will need to drive himself to the college campus for classes.  I really tried to convince him to take Drivers Ed this last summer just to get it over with, but he procrastinated.  Jason and I got to watch Kaiden get an award at school.  I bought Kaiden and Alex a Lego jeep and dinosaur for Valentines.  I also found some Lego dinosaurs for his Valentine cards too.  Coolest Valentine ever.  Each kid gets to build their own dinosaur.  Kaiden and Alex each got 6+ dinosaurs to test them out too.  Plus they have instructions to combine 6 small dinosaurs to create one huge maga dinosaur! Fred came back to visit again this year.  So, probably about 6+ years ago we had a pigeon smack into the side of our house and injured his wing.  Jason heard it happen and assumes he was trying to escape a bald eagle or larger bird.  He ended up hobbling to our side yard behind our fence and we put a tarp over one of the 4 wheelers so he could hide out underneath it.  The boys and I bought bird food and left some for him every day.  They named him Fred. He hung around for at least a month while his wing healed and then flew off.  Every since then though every year a pigeon visits our house randomly and hangs out in the tree in our backyard and coo's.  I'm pretty sure it's Fred.  Last picture is family game night.  We played 2 different Harry Potter games and we got Jason hooked on the Quidditch game.