Bright Eyes

Ellea and I got to go visit her sweet cousin twins and their family last weekend.  We hadn't seen them in a whole month and they had changed so much.  They're four months old already.  We met at Costco to share some baby wrangling duties while shopping which is a favorite activity of a certain someone.

This girl is an expert.  Diaper changing, getting dressed, burping, soothing.  She can do it all.

Sweet baby Cecelia was in a great, happy mood.

And somehow, I didn't track who I was taking pictures of each time I pulled out my camera.  Turned out every single picture was of Cecelia.  We did hold and help with Beatrice, too, but you wouldn't know it based on the pictures.

This is Cecelia's usually look.  Bright eyed and serious.  It looks like I'm scaring her, but no one was harmed in the taking of this photo.  At least, I don't think so.

Basketball Begins (Again) . . .

We're in the middle of Morgan's 5th grade basketball season.  Over the weekend, his team had their first tournament.  Let's just say that it was an opportunity for lots of practice and improvement.  They were pretty evenly matched by the first team they played, but the two other teams had clearly had LOTS more playing experience.

Ellea and I went and watched one of the games and Morgan played really well.  He even made one free throw and a basket, so that was exciting.

Of course, Glenn is his coach (with some help from a couple moms).  Glenn has decided that boys are much different to coach that girls.  Lots goofing around, farting noises (real and fake.....!) and so, so easily distracted.  Thankfully, our son is one of the better behaved teammates (he'd better be!).  Such a good daddy.  Proud of you both.

Baby Time

Ellea and I were lucky enough to get to babysit a good friend's adorable baby girl over Christmas break while her mama went skiing with her other kids.  Little Ruby was so fun to hang out with.

She loved her green beans....she would throw herself toward the spoon every time!

And who doesn't love some sweet baby cuddles?

A New Member of the Family

Meet the newest member of the family.  This sweet  boy will be Nicole's senior project.  She is required to pick a project that will take at least 20 hours to complete and then prepare a presentation on what she did, how it went, what she learned, etc.  She wanted her project to be training a horse.  And, no, Nicole is not a senior, but they encourage kids to figure out their project during their junior year and even have it at least partially completed by the start of their senior year.

This guy's previous owners called him "V" which was short for Vandal.  Nicole is not sure she's going to keep the name V and we already have a cat named Vandal, so we'll see what he gets called.  He's about 7 years old and has only been ridden a handful of times.  It's been over a year since his last ride. 

So far, so good.  He is just about the most relaxed, easy going horse we've ever met.  Nicole walked him around the pen where he has lived the last couple of days and gave him some hay.  No running around, no whinnying at our other horses nearby, just chill.  Happy to eat his hay.  If that's any indication of the months to come,  I think it bodes well for our little horse trainer.

The next step is to introduce him to the other horses.  Fingers crossed that they like him as much as Nicole does!

Electricity is Our Friend

We experienced a special treat at our house last night.  A power outage!  And not just any old power outage.  No, this was the three-hour long variety.  My kids say they don't remember the power ever being out longer than a few minutes, so it was about time they get to experience the joy of seeing what life may have been like before electricity.  And maybe understand why people went to bed early when they lived by candlelight.

We were already in the middle of playing a game.  Lucky for us, Grandma was over visiting which made our little adventure even more fun.

Dinner was already cooking and thank goodness for our propane stove because we knew we wouldn't starve.  That's important.

And, what power outage is complete without a piano recital by flashlight?

We ended up playing multiple games because, well, what else were we going to do by candlelight to entertain ourselves?  We discovered that even with millions of candles on the table, it's hard to see well enough to play certain games.  I was beginning to feel some eye strain no matter how I arranged the candles.  We do own a propane lantern, but it is conveniently stored in our camper which is not at our house right now.  Now that I think about it, I think we also own an old-fashioned gas fueled lamp.  Maybe next time.

Needless to say, we were all pretty thrilled when the lights came on!  Yay for electricity!

Working Woman

Our oldest has her first official job.  She's working at our little ski hill in Cottonwood once every weekend.  She started right after Christmas and got her first paycheck the other day.  Woohoo!  Spending money.

I made her stop on her way out the door to take a picture.  Very first day of work!

More Poxleitner Craziness

A little more fun from our annual Poxleitner Christmas party of 2015....

Play-Doh is always fun...

Regardless of your age.

And a little baby holding is always a treat, at least for the holders.  Babies don't look too impressed!

An impromptu piano duet can be entertaining for both the listeners and performers.

Another fun year of celebrating Christ's birth with this crazy bunch.  Only 11 more months until we try to replicate all this fun.  Can't wait!

Pills in Cheese

This sweet girl gave us a scare this week.  All of a sudden she began to have these strange, brief episodes where she would lose muscle control and fall down and twitch a little.  Kind of reminded me of a mild seizure, but not really.  It happened every 5 to 10 minutes.

After a trip to the vet with some blood work and thorough examination, she is being treated for meningitis.  Less than 5 hours after the steroid shot she received, she was much better, thankfully.

Of course, she will be taking pills for awhile.  And our darling Zip is on three different medications for Hyperthyroidism and heart disease.  Twice a day, I feel like a pharmacist.  A pharmacist who dispenses her pills cheese.

These two are big fans of our cheese routine.  These humans want to give us cheese twice a day?  Okay.  One of Zoey's pills is quite large.  I was sure she would spit it out, but apparently she does little actual chewing, because it goes down without incident.  She just appreciates that she's getting such a large piece of cheese to go with it, I guess.

Sledding on Christmas

We had some special visitors come visit us on Christmas day.  After a turkey dinner, we went out to the sledding hill for some good old fashioned snow fun.

One way to share a sled....

Another way to share! :)

Our kids are so spoiled with a ride back to the top of the hill every time.  (Tony driving)

I even took a turn delivering children.

It's nice we have an extra driver these days.

Sophia decided she'd try a non-traditional method of getting down the hill.  It took awhile, but she actually did roll all the way to the bottom!

We tried out night sledding the last time Manginis went sledding with us.  As you might know, with kids, if you do something once it becomes a thing.  So, of course, we had to do some night sledding.

It was fun.  Cold, but fun.

Thanks for for making Christmas so fun, Mangini family!  We might have to make this a thing. =)

Christmas Goodies

Morgan is always so faithful at leaving Santa cookies and milk.  This year he outdid himself by creating melted snowmen cookies.  I'm sure Santa enjoyed them!

Even better, Ellea decreed that we must have cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.  We gave this recipe for overnight cinnamon rolls a try and it was a delightful success.  I think this may be the beginning of a tradition!

Warm Horse, Cold Human

My daughter talked me into going for a horse back ride a few days ago.  It was a balmy 18 degrees.  I suggested I wanted to use my saddle, but she wisely talked me out of it.  Utilizing my horse's body heat to keep my legs warm was much better than a cold leather saddle!

Notice in the above photo that I am fully bundled up.  My crazy daughter didn't have a hat on.  

Crazy, right?!  Right.

Horse riding selfie.

The horses did pretty well considering how little they've been ridden recently.  Nicole and I were fully chilled by the time we got home.  Cold toes, cold nose.  Otherwise, not too bad.  We were glad we did it.  We were glad to be back home in the warm house when we were done, too.