Utah, Sledding, Tocanos and Scum

We decided to spend a couple of days in Utah with my dad this weekend, so we packed up and left after the kids got home from school on Friday.

Today we took the kids sledding. It was foggy and snowing, which made it a little hard to see, but I could tell that where we were was a beautiful place. I'd like to go back there on a clear day. The snow was so deep that we'd sink down to our hips sometimes. Crazy deep powder. Devin would have loved it.

This evening we went to dinner a Tocanos with Brady and Corinne. They had already eaten but came to hang out with us anyway. I appreciated that. It was fun to visit with them. During dinner, Mason came over to me and said "Mom, I'm not going to wake you up in the middle of the night tonight to tell you that I'm hungry because I won't be. I won't. I was full and I STILL kept eating. Now I'm SO full. So I wont wake you up ok?"

I thought it was pretty funny because it's not like he wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me he's hungry. Sometimes right before bed he's hungry, but that's it.

After dinner, Brady and Corinne came over to dads to play cards with us. Instead of playing Hotels or Risk like we usually do, they taught us how to play Scum which was really fun. We used to play that at my moms house growing up, except we used funny hats to distinguish our position in the game and I think we called it Kings.

I appreciate the effort that Brady and Corinne make to include our kids when they're around. I know that our kids appreciate it too.

Mason played the game for a couple of rounds but then decided to go and do something else. Brooklynn played for quite a while but then decided to try to keep track of the score, which wasn't part of the game. It was making it so she wasn't following the game very well and her turns were taking too long.

I told her that she needed to quit keeping score if she wanted to keep playing. She chose to quit playing.

When I laid in bed and thought about it later I realized that I hadn't handled the situation very well. It would have been better for me to explain to her (probably in another room) why it wasn't working for her to write down the score. I think that she left the game feeling like I didn't want her to play, so it would have been helpful for me to let her know that I enjoyed having her play but that what she was doing just wasn't working. I was more focused on the game than I was on the opportunity I had to teach.

I'm trying not to beat myself up over the whole thing, but I don't want to just let it go either. I'm sure that we'll find ourselves in a similar situation again and I'd like to handle it differently next time.

Mia played the whole game and by the time we finished she was being soo goofy because she was soo tired. It was pretty funny.

Bre stayed home this weekend with my mom because she had a play practice she couldn't miss, but today I got a text from her telling me and Ryan how much she appreciated us. It was a pretty long text and it surprised us both since it was so out of the blue. Ryan thought that maybe it was the result of a young women's project or a youth fireside she had gone to. I said "I bet it's because she spent the day with friends who's parents do things differently than we do."

That was it.

I'm grateful for her ability to recognize and acknowledge things like that. She's very perceptive.