Hey again

Hi again.  It's been 3 months since I last posted.  I had just run a marathon, one of my big goals in life.  Things got busy after that.  Christmas was insane this year, and I really hope to keep things more calm in future years.  My kids are in the midst of the gimme-gimme phase, and I'm having a hard time keeping things under control.  They don't appreciate the little things, and I ended up doing a lot of big things to make up for it, and it was just too much.

We spent New Years at Tahoe, which was tons of fun.  A bunch of friends of ours circulated in and out of the house we rented, and we spent the week teaching the kids to ski, which was a blast (if quite painful for our aching backs).  They've almost got it, but the terrible warm weather and lack of rain/snow (AGAIN) means we haven't been up to the mountains since.  To make up for that, we're going to Italy for a few weeks at the beginning of April, to spend what we hope will be a nice ski weekend in the Alps.

I started the kids in violin lessons in January, too, and they're doing great.  It's hard to get them to practice, and a TON of work to keep them motivated and creating games to make practicing more enticing, but it's paying off already.  It's amazing to see how quickly they learn at this age.  While I don't really care if they keep playing as they get older, I want to just give them a good foundation in music for so many reasons.  Even if they end up quitting, they'll keep so many of the benefits, and if they switch to another instrument, or voice, they'll have the basics already.

They start a higher level of soccer tomorrow, too.  We're all excited about that!  I don't know if we'll keep doing swimming this year, at least not as seriously as we did last year.  They can still swim (i.e. not sink/drown), and if they really enjoy it, I'm thrilled for them to keep it up, as swimming is one my favorite sports, but I don't want to push it.

And that's about it.  There's a lot more to talk about - my mom, my work, my hobbies, etc., but I have time.  I'll be posting more often, I hope, in the next little while.