We don't have any pictures this week, so I'm just going to share a few things and my thoughts about them:

1) Evelyn played drums in church again. They did some of the oldies, including "Get Together" by the Yougbloods. That was fun. She really does do a great job and always gets lots of good feedback from the people who are there. I am also impressed at her preparation. She does a lot of things, and puts in the time that it takes to do them well. It's pretty cool.

2) We are picking up the Durango from the shop today. We got new tires on it and got everything fixed up to turn the keys over to Ev. It's a little bit scary. I've been driving with her to school every day and she does a pretty good job, but there have been a few minor incidents that make me worried about turning her lose on the world. I guess we all have to learn though.

3) Remember when Maren got rats a couple of weeks ago? Well, it turns out that unbeknownst to Rachel, she bought a pregnant rat. Now we have 13 of them. I try my best not to think about it, but when I do I find myself a little bit put out. Also, Maren possibly has an allergy to the rats and can't sleep in the same room as them or else she breaks out in a rash. This whole thing is turning into quite the fiasco. I'm not sure what a happy ending would even look like at this point. Happy or not, the status quo can't last much longer.

4) A lot of people in our family have been dealing with a little bug with cold-like symptoms. It's been sort of yucky, but I think it's pretty much behind us now. This has also led to a confounding factor in trying to figure out what is going on with Maren (see above).

5) We had a storm come through our area, which led to some of the best skiing of the year. I was at Schweitzer with a friend on Sunday, and then Rachel and I headed up on Monday for more silky smooth turns. I know it is pretty much every week, but I honestly can't think of a much more joyful activity than skiing. It fulfills something deep. 

6) Jackson has committed himself to learning how to snowboard. This means that he gets left far behind everyone else, and he has already taken some pretty nasty falls, but so far he has stuck with it. He has two whole days under his belt. 

7) On Saturday night, Rach and I went out to dinner with some friends, and then they invited us to a club afterwards. I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different settings. This club was not one of them. The dinner and the company were nice though.

8) I find myself feeling very grateful right now for the life we get to live. We are all healthy, and able to do things that we like and that fill our lives with meaning. We spend a lot of time together as a family- usually on the weekends-  but we each also have our own friends and interests to pursue. I love having teenage kids, and coming home from a ski trip the other day to a house full of friends and activity led to a feeling of deep satisfaction. 

Well, that's about it for this week. No pictures. That happens sometimes.

Have a good week!

It snowed 14 inches during the day on Friday. It snowed 8 inches more overnight. We woke up on Saturday to bright blue skies and warm temps. We were at Snowbird- my favorite resort ever. It was one of the best ski days of our lives.

We were actually up on the mountain Friday and Sunday as well, and all the days were wonderful. But Saturday. Oh my.

Besides skiing, we saw lots of family and celebrated birthdays for Maren and Evelyn. 

I feel at a loss for words here. Let's do some photos:

Everything about this day was just joyful. Jubilant. Euphoric. 

The Snowbird tunnel is worth the visit. We didn't spend much time in Mineral Basin- preferring instead the runs off the cirque traverse, but the museum quality of this magic carpet lift is really neat. It feels like an old-school Disneyland ride. 

Maren is actually much sweeter than she looks with her ski mask on

If a photo is worth a thousand words, this is it. Because of all the snow that fell during the day (Friday), getting out of the parking lot at Alta was quite the ordeal. Rather than hold up traffic with our little minivan, we opted to have dinner in the car and watch a movie while things cleared out. It then took us some digging and several runs up the ramp to finally make in onto the main road. I thought it was fun. I'm not sure that everyone agrees though. The next day we made sure to put chains on our tires.

Poor Lindsey felt sick for the entire weekend. She did one run on Friday, and then sat in the lodge for the rest of the day. She didn't even go up with us on the other days, opting to spend time resting and playing with her cousin instead.

Also, Lindsey being the charismatic kid that she is, came off her day in the lodge in good spirits. She said that she made a lot of friends while sitting on the couch, including with a girl named Kara. Apparently they had both traveled a lot for skiing and they talked at length about their favorite resorts. It was only on the drive home when we were talking about Jackson Hole that Lindsey piped in- "Oh yeah. My friend Kara lived there and she won the Kings and Queens contest." Wait- what? It checks out- Kara Munsey is a mild ski celebrity who sat on the podium in 2018 and now lives in Salt Lake and works as a nurse. That's pretty neat.

Shannon did a nice birthday party with family for Maren and Evelyn.

This is the cake she had made. Pictures of Ev and Mare are printed onto the frosting, and the cake decorator custom designed a bunny (for Maren) playing the drums (Ev, obviously). 
How neat is that?

Family, travel, skiing, food. What a great weekend!

Have a good week!

This is one of those weekends that already feel like a dream. Yesterday at this time I was sipping coffee, looking out the window at snow-covered peaks, and getting ready for an epic day of skiing. This was day three in our little condo that had served perfectly as a home base for our adventures, sitting just minutes away from the lift. We had already explored most of the mountain, and since this would be the last day out there, we each had a few specific objectives. Maren and Rachel raced the steep groomers that were used for world cup training. Addy had her best runs- maybe of her life- on the moguls. And Evelyn hit the steeps with the cool headed composure that can only come from years of experience. Lindsey and Jackson...made a snowman...maybe? Panorama is one of those "perfect" resorts with something for everyone, including big mountain terrain formerly only accessible via helicopter. We loved it, and I think it is unanimous that this was the best ski weekend of the winter so far. 

And then this morning I dropped Ev off at the high school and just drove into work as if nothing had happened. We'll catch up on some super-bowl stuff tonight, and celebrate Maren's 12th birthday. I'll pick up some groceries, and maybe go to the gym. Life goes on- but for a little while it will feel different as we come off the high that was the weekend.

We had space to spread out a little compared to our normal hotel rooms. Here we are getting ready for the day.

The condo was next to a big frozen lake

Speed queens

 I spent most of my time with Ev and Addy in steeper terrain

Movie nights are a pretty normal part of these weekend trips.

I have no idea what is happening here. They found a large letter A? Ok. In this picture they are posing like Moses is supposing. Also, this reference will not be lost on these kids, even if they weren't thinking it in the moment.

Getting ready to drop. A little bit lower coverage than normal made these runs extra spicy.

The view out our window. The mountains up here are unreal.

Have a good week!

It has been such a fabulous, refreshing week. I don't even know that I could fully explain why. Just, a lot of good things all adding up together. Here are some photos:

These two little girls have joined our family. Tito and Daisy. They belong to Maren. She loves them so much. And they are much more manageable than rabbits.

Evelyn and Josh have officially been "dating" for a year. They are booth goofy kids, both great musicians, and both fun to hang out with. Josh had never been skiing before. They spent a good day hanging out in Wallace together, and then went up to the resort with the family. Evelyn was a very patient teacher to an eager student. The rest of us had a great day higher up on the mountain.

Ev is also part of the ski club at school and has been doing trips with them. The last one, she said, was one of her best ski days of the season so far.

The obligatory Silver Mountain picture. 

It was about time I get a photo of this. Every time we go skiing, we all have to wait for Rachel to do her leg swings before we can do the first run together. We kind of give her a hard time about it, but I guess an extra two minutes in the morning is worth it for good knees. 

Ev and Josh

I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would own a nail gun (or any other kind of gun, for that matter). Well, I guess sometimes we surprise ourselves. The Wallace project is in full swing right now. I have all the same feelings as I did when I was a kid building forts and treehouses. Rachel and I went up without kids on Sunday and got some stuff done. We also went out to dinner, spent the night in Wallace, and had a great breakfast the next day. We even got a few ski runs in before heading home. As for the kids, they got themselves off to school and never really even missed us. It was a great getaway.

I didn't take any photos during our little local getaway, but I sure like hanging out with Rach and I made her take this selfie with me to signify the time we had spent together.