The Family Routine

I haven't blogged yet this week. A good sign perhaps of life getting a little fuller. It is certainly more structured since Maja has been in school. My days have slipped into a pleasing rhythm of cycling Maja to school, some stuff in between and collecting her again.
I will talk about Maja first! We were all tired last weekend but we managed to get to a shul called Bonai Shalom. We were welcomed and well fed (which is par for the course at a shul!)
Later, we spent some time in the afternoon chilling in the hot tub. With snow in the garden it really was glorious! Maja had goggles on and managed to spend most of the time under water.
Monday was Presidents Day, so no school and Maja had two exciting events.She was invited to a birthday party in the afternoon and straight after had her first Boulder swimming lesson! The party was out of town in a sort of bouncy castle style inflatable assault course...designed for maximum excitement and exhaustion!
With swimming immediately after, Maja slept well that night.
She continues to enjoy school, coming home singing in Spanish and she has maths homework once a week. I notice that over here the Kindergarten curriculum seems to be very maths based whereas we concentrate a little more on literacy skills.
Monkey bars are still a great pleasure for Maja. We have them in the little play park in our neighbourhood and in the Kindergarten playground. She is practising hard and getting really good!
Jonathan is settling into a work routine but seems to have a better work life balance. He went skiing on Tuesday with some collegues and the dept have an away day on Friday....which involves skiing, pizza and beer!!
Oh, and I have found a running partner and a race to train for! I am also taking a couple of classes a week. One in Torah study, the other in Kabballah.... no daytime telly for me!
I am volunteering in Maja's class tomorrow so that will give me some insight into what she is doing at school.

The Kindergarten playground

This is where the Kindergarten pupils play! They have recess here and play here in the morning until the bell rings.

School

Maja and her friend

Home from home

We have snow! We woke up to find we were in a magical fairyland. Maja was so excited! She got dressed really quickly and ran out to play in the garden. with blue sky and sun, the walk to school was glorious (it was a bit icy for the bike) Maja is enjoying school a lot. Mainly because all the English speaking children have Spanish lessons, so she is thrilled and practising on us like mad! I think we should build on that when we come home. Valentines Day is a really big thing here and she is supposed to bring a card for everyone in her class...let's not ever get into that in the UK! They have a party on Friday at school with red foods..should be fun.

Maja starts school US, style

Maja has started school. Columbine Elementary has around 360 pupils -75% are Hispanic. We are told that all the Spanish speaking kids in Boulder attend Columbine and some classes are purely taught in Spanish, some are bi-lingual and some are English with Spanish lessons. Maja is in a class that is English speaking, but we do hope she will pick up some Spanish too. The school is undergoing what they describe as "re-visioning" ...we might describe it as being in special measures or notice to improve. As a result of this, funding from Boulder valley School District means small classes (14 in Majas) and a lot of classroom support in terms of human resources.
So, Maja will have the full American experience! I wonder whether she will get an American accent? Will I be Mom instead of Mama or Mimlet as she usually calls me?
The house has seemed very quiet today (apart from the wind outside...it's blowing a whistler!)and I can't wait to pick her up and see how it all went!

Skiing, sleeping and Dead Iceman Day

Well there is no snow in Boulder so we piled into the car and made a little expedition to Eldora- the nearest ski resort...a motley crew..half asleep, but eager to see some snow and get the low down on classes. Everyone in Boulder skis...downhill, cross country. If that doesn't appeal you can go snow shoeing. for those of you in blissful ignornce, this involves putting a contraption that looks like the offspring of a crampon and a tennis raquet on each boot and walking or running on snowy trails...strangely this actually probably appeals to me more than skiing so I might give it a go sometime...watch this space!
Thanks to the early start we got there in time to book Maja into a full days ski school. She joined a little group of tiddlers (she was obviously the tiddliest of all!)

They were all beginners and were quickly divided into 2 even smaller groups with an eager high fiving camp- counsellor type instructor! Maja needed those high fives at first, but made progress as the day progressed.

So what are parents doing while child is skiing? Well most go off and ski, but some wait around in a large cafe, where for 6 bucks you can access wi fi and use your laptop to your hearts content....and drink coffee...and eat....and eat.
Jonathan spent most of the day on the ski school sidelines encouraging and helping. I am not known for my love of cold so I spent most of the time in the cafe chatting to other parents. At one point I fell fast asleep (I am becoming quite adept at sleeping in odd and public places) and slept for an hour or so. I really hope I wasn't snoring!
Which brings me to the last subject for this blog...dead iceman day. in the course of conversation with a friendly couple on the same lunch table as us, Jonathan enquired about a funny little town called Nederland that we had driven through on the way to Eldora.
Apparently nothing much happens there but they have this day of celebration called...Dead Iceman Day. the story goes that a Swedish guy living in Nederland died and there was some kind of beaurocratic nightmare involved in sending his body back to Sweden to be buried....so his son packed him in ice while the wrangling continued and continued to pack him in ice ,I think in a sort of igloo. Two years passed (with, one assumes, Old Dad preserved in the ice) and eventually it was all agreed and he was sent off to Sweden to be buried. Since then, the anniversary is celebrated as...you guessed it..Dead Iceman Day. I wonder what they do? All suggestions posted please! (Apologies for any inaccuacies in this story. I'm relaying it as I remember it....)

A long day in Boulder

When you have jet lag, the days are long..that's just an observation. Today began at 4.30am and at 7.15pm it's still on the go. the advantage is that you can have a lot of experiences in one day. I will share 2 experiences!
Firstly, I cycled today without whinging and actually enjoyed it (thanks to really well thought through cycle paths) We cycled to a pool and took Maja for a swim and I am practising cycling with Maja on the bike seat (don't tell my mother though...she doesn't have much faith in my common sense or cycling ability!)
Later when Maja and another little girl got themselves locked in a tennis court...... I managed to pick the lock and release them, so I can see another career ahead when I come home in August!
I am withdrawing from regular TV watching.... the TV here is truly dire! I am reading a lot so will post some book reviews on here if anyone is interested. Life for me is beginning to slow down to an extremely pleasing pace stress is a thing of the past and I am almost transformed into a reasonable person!

Arrival

Well,we've arrived. Journey was OK and we missed the snow in the UK by a day, which was great for avoiding all the delays but there's no snow here, so we're a bit disappointed too. It's pretty mild at the minute and very sunny. We brought far too many cold weather clothes so we'll have to spend a few weeks in the mountains to feel it was worth it. Here's a photo of Maja in the tree house, which she loves.