I’m Blessed

We are snowed in.  Knut was skiing the Vasaloppet 58km ski race this weekend, and the kids skied their first race, the “miniloppet” the day before.  David took 3rd place, and it was so exciting.  I’ll come back to that.

We were just planning on staying in this hotel Saturday night with Silje, David, and Ingrid (Elias and Solveig got a weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s).  However, when it was time to check out at 11am on Sunday, Knut was in the middle of his race, I was looking outside at the sheets of snow coming down, I was looking online at how it was worse back home, and there was potential road closing, I was getting anxious about this whole idea of checking out of the hotel.  I packed up the van, anyway, because I know Knut is a die-hard stick to the plan sort of guy, and I have never, ever gotten him to pull off the road in bad weather before.  In his mind the safest place for us to be is home, so he wants to take us there.

So I called Knut’s parents to see what the road conditions were like back home, and Knut’s dad said very plainly that we should stay put.  This mid-western family doesn’t always say things plainly, but beats around the bush a bunch, so I took his straight forward “You should not drive” very seriously, and with much relief.  If Knut were there with me to make the decision, the first thing he would have done was called his dad, and if his dad said we should stay, and having his backing made me feel like I could show Knut I had done my due diligence in making a wise decision.

I am so blessed to have had this time with 3 of my kids, and such a relaxing extra day of our mini-trip.  It has been pretty relaxing, and Knut did pretty well, considering that snow was coming down in sheets while he was racing.  I’m blessed he didn’t have any injuries, and that our car didn’t go in the ditch like several we saw on the 5 mile drive from the finish line to the hotel.  Knut was blessed that instead of being picked up from the long race, and driving several hours home in a blizzard, he got a shower and a soak in the hot tub by the pool.

There’s just lots of blessings in this snow!

I feel so silly that I have no pictures to show you from our amazing weekend, unless you want me to snap some pictures of the kids sitting on the bed and watching t.v. right now.  I had planned carefully to bring my camera along, and I had cleared my camera card, and packed the charger.  When we got to the finish line, I took a few shots to check the lighting, and before I knew it, the 1st place kid finisher was coming around the corner.  We all cheered for her.  She was a 10 year old girl, and she knew how to skate, which not all the kids knew how to do.

We waited a small bit, and then we saw 2 boys come around the corner.  My jaw dropped as I squinted to see that David was the finisher on the left, and he was one of the first finishers…and we’re talking over a hundred kids, and many of them a few years older than him.  I got the camera propped, but when I started trying to click nothing was happening, and I looked to see that my battery was dead.  I had packed the charger, but I didn’t check to see if it needed to be charged.  Urgh!  So I was the only one to see David’s pure face of glee as he skied downtown Mora, MN where they had trucked in snow to cover the main street, and cross the finish line and get his finisher’s metal.

Knut found out that the parents were allowed to ski the trail with their kids, and so he was skiing with Silje and David before David pulled away from them and finished much earlier.  Knut was behind with Silje, and kept encouraging her, but he said about half way through their 1.5km track she sort of gave up, and didn’t feel like finishing.  So he was trying to keep her going.  It’s been a challenge with these 2 oldest who are extremely competitive to understand that it’s okay for them to BOTH do their best.  If Silje excels in something, David doesn’t try.  If David does well in something, Silje doesn’t try.  It’s so frustrating, because they don’t understand that these ski races, even for Knut, are about pushing yourself, and beating your own score, and less about beating everyone else.  Most people don’t run a marathon to beat everyone.  You do it to prove to yourself that you can do it.

So it’s a touchy thing to praise David for putting his whole heart into it, but also making sure Silje knows that we’re proud of her for doing the race.  Also, we want her to learn that it’s okay to be excited that someone you love did something important to them.  We’ve seen Silje beat David several times in skiing.  She’s just as good.  She’s just not as obsessed about it as he is.  She just has it stuck in her head that David is the skier, therefore she isn’t.  It’s hard to know what to do with that as a parent.

Sorry, I’m getting off topic.  So I don’t have a picture of these amazing races.  I could have taken pictures at Knut’s race, but I was holding Ingrid, and trying to keep 2 kids patient as we waited for him in the wind and snow at the finish line, and my hands were cold and I didn’t want to take them out of the mittens.

So you all have to use your imagination.  Take out a white sheet of paper, and stare at it, and it will be like a high definition picture of our weekend.  Lotsa white.

I’m blessed to be going home today.  I’m blessed with a sleeping baby who has gotten a stuffy nose this weekend.  I don’t think it’s from the snow, but from her siblings at Grandma and Grandpas who got a bit sick this weekend with their colds turning into fevers.  I think it’s all the same bug.  Her cough is my biggest concern, because it just sounds so awful, but I keep watching her stomach breathing, as I remember watching the nurses do when Elias was hospitalized with RSV twice.  I’ve been through newborn colds a few times now, and I know the big warning signs, and her stomach isn’t doing the work that Elias’ did when he was sick.  Still this cough is not good, though it’s not very frequent.  I wish I could run someplace and get a quick opinion, but I wasn’t about to venture on closed roads in a snowstorm to an emergency room for a little cough that’s probably nothing.  If it’s still around tomorrow, though, I think I’ll have her checked out.  She slept really well last night, and she’s her smiley self this morning.  She’s taking her morning nap right now and her breathing is 100% normal.  It’s only when she coughs that my ears perk up and my body stiffens all over.

Now I’m really getting off topic.

I’m blessed with blog readers who are used to, and don’t mind me getting off topic.  I love all the friends I have met through this blog, and hearing from you readers is such a thrill for me.