Family Ski Trip

We're 3 days into a week long local ski trip... a bit envious of our Maryland friends who are getting all the snowfall. It seems that this January was the 6th driest on record here in Colorado and it's evident at the ski resorts. You can still find good conditions, but you have to go searching for them. Some of the trails have more rocks than they should and others have grassy patches, much like you find during spring skiing. We plan to spend the week over at Vail and Beaver Creek where there's more terrain and better snow.

The kids are skiing well. Sanjay seems to have remembered everything from last year and he's gained a LOT of speed. Luckily though he maintains control even when he starts skiing faster. Honestly, I cannot keep up with him on the black diamond mogul trails that we ski. My only chance of staying ahead of him is on the mogul-free blue trails. He is much better than me on varied terrain and today after I mentioned to Bartee that we were on a trail that exceeded my ability level, Sanjay started looking out for me. He insisted on staying with me and every once in a while, he'd look up and say "Come this way Mom... see me? Come towards me" or "Are you ok, Mom?" or "Go around that tree and come down here". It was too cute. Priya also said to me, "Mom, if I can do it, you can too", trying to alleviate my fears. But then after about 100 yards of those steep moguls and trees, she started to fall apart. It was too much for her, too and on top of that she was cold, her legs were tired, her fingers were numb and she "doesn't want to ski every day this week". We heard excuse after excuse all the way down. Bartee and I took turns losing patience with her. She's a great skier, but she unfortunately lacks confidence. It's even harder for her when she sees Sanjay excelling. We try to compensate with lots of compliments, but sometimes that backfires. Today she threatened to bury my camera in the snow. It's always an adventure with these two Jekyll and Hyde children of ours.



For more pictures of today's adventures, click here.

While we were out skiing, Caboose was with a dog walker in the area. We got an email report and some photos of their day together.

"Caboose was a very good boy today. He had a 2 hour walk so I hope he's a litte more relaxed for you all."



p.s. - I have a video to share with you, but YouTube is down right now. I'll try to get that uploaded tomorrow.

Ski Weekend in Breckenridge

Turns out that this winter hasn't been fruitful in the snow department. I know you East coast folk may find that hard to believe since you've been getting dumped on, but it's been a little dry over here. We finally did make it up for a weekend of family skiing and it coincided with the annual Snow Sculpture festival in Breckenridge so that was a nice bonus.

The first few hours of the first day were filled with Priya's fun remarks like "Daddy I told you I want to review since this is my first time this year" and her crying because "Daddy is not letting me review, he's making me go in the trees".

And then Sanjay had a good wipe out in the deep snow in the trees. I think there was just one place on the whole mountain where the snow was deep in the trees and Sanjay found it. Of course, Daddy was about 176 yards ahead and therefore missed the whole thing. It took me about 10 minutes, some unnecessary yelling at Sanjay (he was only following Daddy) and a few years off the life of my back to get him out of that mess.

The afternoon went a lot more smoothly and everyone got their ski legs back. The weather was fantastic and the kid's moods were amazing.... all were warm and sunny.

We are headed up again this weekend for a 10 day trip, so expect more frequent blog posts and many more pictures of snow. Trying again this year to get my aunt and her family out here for a ski trip and the pictures seem to work well for this. We miss our old ski buddies.

Here are Priya and Sanjay at the top of a trail. Off in the distance, and by off in the distance I mean those teeny tiny white lines at the top of the photo, you can see some of the slopes over at Keystone.



For more photos of our Breck adventures, click here.

I took a fun little video of the kids riding the roller coaster hills in the Terrain park. It highlights Sanjay's mad ski skills maneuvering out of the way when Priya stopped on a dime in the worst of places.

Stitches - Update

Here are some pictures of the accident... some of you were asking. :)

The first set was taken 24 hours after the stitches were in place... 2 on one side and 5 on the other.



These were taken tonight about 48 hours after removal of the stitches. It's looking like it will heal just fine.



Hard to believe that this cuddly creature could have caused that damage...

That's Just the Kind of Parents We Are

You know those parents that threaten, threaten and threaten their kids some more; all without following through? Not us, no, we do not make empty threats. We make sure that they happen even if several weeks have passed.

For the past 4 months or so, the most common phrase heard in our house is something along the lines of "Stop doing that to the dog. He will be fed up with your teasing and he'll bite you and you will bleed a lot. You will probably even need stitches. Is that what you want?". Well, as of last night, this is no longer a threat.

We didn't see it happen, but we heard the screams and Sanjay explained later that he was hitting Caboose. He ended up with 2 gashes in his lower lip that luckily did not penetrate all the way through, but still required a visit to the ER. I think they put 2 stitches on one side and 4-5 on the other. Ironically, some friends were over for dinner at the time. One of them, a doctor, was no kidding 10 minutes earlier just telling us about how he stitched up his daughter's chin at home the previous night. Luckily, he saw Sanjay's wound and advised us to have him seen since stitches should really be given within the first 4 hours. He was apologetic about not having his suture kit with him in the car. :)

We made our way to the hospital ER, as advised by our on-call pediatrician's nurse since the bite was to his face. In the hospital room, Sanjay was having a blast with the TV remote and had more than enough time to really get settled in. I'm glad it wasn't a true emergency. We got there just around shift-change so that added some delays. And, either every nurse wants to see a 5 year old with a dog bite or they have a quota to reach or something because I think we met about 8 different people in the span of 3 hours that we spent at the hospital.








A not-so-short summary of our 3 hour hospital experience:

The triage nurse checked us in, took temps, got his weight and whatnot, then assigned us a room. 10-15 minutes pass. The ending-shift nurse came in to tell us that he was leaving and a new nurse would be coming in. 10-15 minutes pass. Another chick came in for some more paperwork and to take our insurance card. 10-15 minutes pass. Then the new-shift nurse came in, put some gloves on and looked at his lip (this was the 3rd person to have a look at it). 10-15 minutes pass.

The doctor came in, introduced himself, took a look and determined that stitches were necessary for both sides. He said he'd be right back. After 10 minutes, yet another nurse, Eric, came in to drop off the sterile kit for sutures. 20 minutes later the doctor came back with yet another new nurse to presumably start working on Sanjay. Within 5 minutes, he stepped out and about 5 minutes later the nurse says to me, "Where did he go?". Which is exactly what I was wondering. She went to check on him and came back, flushed the wound out and says to me, "I think he wants me to go ahead and do the stitches, but I usually don't like to do the kids because the parents aren't comfortable with it". So, I kind of act like I didn't hear her because I did prefer that the doctor put the stitches in. We wait and wait some more and she says, "Do you mind if I go ahead and put one in this side?". We were both kind of tired of waiting on the doc, so I agreed.

I don't think Sanjay realized that stitches means a needle and thread will be going through your lip, so when he saw everything he was naturally freaking out. The lip was quivering, the head was turning... I'm not sure how she managed to get that one stitch in. And, with all my previous medical training, I'm thinking "that's going to need another stitch". It was actually quite obvious, but there was no way Sanjay was going to be still enough for her to get another one in there and frankly she didn't see the need. The doctor probably heard the screaming, so he finally returned to the room and after a quick look decided to put another stitch on that side. This time he had a really cool cloth to hold up so that Sanjay couldn't see what was going on. This would have been a key component from the very beginning, because at this point Sanjay knew what was going on behind the cloth and although the nurse was holding his head and I was holding his hands he managed to wiggle and cry enough that the doctor was considering an alternative.

We still had the bigger gash on the other side of his lip to close up. He suggested sedation. The sedation would take effect within 10 minutes, but it could take up to an hour for him to come out of it. It was already past 9pm and I was ready to go home, but I understood his predicament. Sanjay was just not cooperating. So, again the nurses and doctors leave the room to get the equipment and prepare to move us to another room for sedation. I am explaining to Sanjay what's going to happen and he really does not want to do the "sleepy medicine". In fact, he was quite adamant about it. In the meantime, another new nurse peeks her head in to grab some bar code stickers from his chart and I flag her down. I told her that we want to try one more time before we jump to sedation. She looks at me like I'm a nutcase because clearly the doctor has already started all the procedures for sedation. I told her to please let us talk to the doctor and maybe try one more time since Sanjay was going to try really hard to remain calm and still. She rolled her eyes and left the room. Yeah, real friendly this one was.

So, 10 minutes later the doctor returns with another nurse that we are just meeting for the first time and he says, "so, you want to try one more time?". The nurse takes her position behind Sanjay's head and starts talking very calmly to him and asking him questions to keep his mind off what was happening. She was incredible. The doctor prepares a needle with more numbing medication as the feeling in Sanjay's lip was starting to come back with all the passing time. Sanjay sees the needle and starts to freak out but the nurse explains that it's just to make it numb again. We held the cloth up, the doctor starts stitching and Sanjay is amazingly calm. I asked him to close his eyes and I was talking to him about the cartoons that were on the TV. The nurse bribed him with a popsicle if he was well-behaved. He did it! I was so proud of him for being able to overcome his fears. The doctor was amazed, too... he was convinced even this second time wouldn't work. When he left the room, he gave a 2 thumbs up sign to the nurses station. At this point, they had all met Sanjay and were interested in updates. Even the grumpy nurse got a smile on her face and it's a good thing, too because she was the one that discharged us. We made it out of there by 10pm and headed straight to the pharmacy to fill a precautionary prescription to fight infection.

It was a late night, but Sanjay's lip looks good and hopefully it's a lesson learned, albeit a painful and expensive one. I have my doubts, but let's see. The law requires the hospital to submit documentation to authorities for dog bites, so it's likely that we'll have to prove Caboose's innocence for the weeks to come, but we are prepared to do that.

Thank You Cards

The kid's birthdays have come and gone without even a mention of it here on the blog. I do have pictures of the events and maybe I will get around to writing up a little something, eventually.

After Priya's party, I asked her to sit down and write "Thank You" cards for the gifts she received. I just gave her some blank cards and let her go to town. Afterwards, when I had to address them I was impressed with her creativity and thoughtfulness, so I thought I should record it here. I especially like her honesty about the coloring book in the first card. Also, in the second one, she has learned to use the dash for continuation of a word at the end of a line, but I see she hasn't figured out that it should be used between syllables. (as always, click the image to enlarge)





In stark contrast to Priya's eloquent cards, Sanjay's contained gross overuse of the word "awesome". He dictated and I transcribed the following Thank You's for his friends:

• The moon sand is awesome, and I can't wait to play with it.
• It was so cool because if you pull this thing off, the "prellers" on the plane spin.
• I love the car wash; it was so great. I even used it a couple of times already.
• It was so awesome because one time me and Priya played the Horseshoe game.
• It was awesome the Bakugan. One time we put together the Bakugan and when it was together it was awesome.

Farewell to Amma

As of this post, Amma has safely traveled halfway across the world to her home in India. She reached in tact, however some of her belongings never left our home. While converting Sanjay's room from a guest room back to his own, we discovered a huge bag of items in the closet which didn't make it into her suitcases. Ooops! Looks like starting the packing more than a week before her departure didn't seem to help. So, now we must find out how to get those items into the flat-rate box which already contains 12 lbs of the excess baggage and is bulging at the seams. I'm gonna let Bartee sort all this out.

Her presence is missed and the cooking has significantly decreased in quality... but we will eventually slip back into our old routine.

I put together some videos (Part 1 and Part 2) of the visit as a souvenir DVD for her, which I thought at least some of you might be interested in viewing. Some of you are even featured, so keep your eyes peeled. For some reason, YouTube thought my "Part 1" video was a copyright infringement, so they cut out the audio. But as they say "pictures are worth a thousand words", so the message will still be conveyed. They are both roughly 5 minutes long. Enjoy!

Update: I just went to the blog site and tried the "Part 1" video and to my surprise, the original audio is there. Hopefully, you get the same thing. I did try some funky audio swap tool from YouTube which didn't seem to work. Looks like it resulted in a bug that let my original audio come through. :)





And, just to entice you to visit Colorado... as I'm always begging you all to do... I've thrown in a Colorado Scenery video which I made as well. I apologize for the abrupt ending. I was planning on going back to change that, but didn't get around to it before she left. Perhaps one day I will finish what I started.

Dinosaur Ridge

In an effort to do some last-minute tourism, we took Amma to Denver to see Dinosaur Ridge and the Hammond's Candy Factory tour. Dinosaur Ridge was really interesting as we were able to see and touch fossilized dinosaur bones in their natural environment. Sanjay and Priya are both fascinated with these creatures, so they were glued to the tour guide the whole time. They even had some facts to add to his story and he was a willing listener. It was a personal tour as the five of us were the only ones crazy enough to do this in the winter time. :)