Jack-o-Lander

We are going to be busy here, it looks like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are making back-to-back visits to our house. Today Lander lost one of his top teeth. It's a good thing, it's been dangling there for several weeks now. It took Bryan and I a lot of composure not to just grab it and yank it out.

Happy Easter!

Lander checking out his find, of course, in his underwear

Goofin' in his Sunday clothes

Lander's Question of the Day

Six year olds ask lots of question, Lander is no exception. Tonight he asked me "Are hot dogs considered meat?" Hmm, good question. I told him that was debatable depending on who you talk to. They definitely are if you think lips, eyelashes and hooves part of the meat group.

Cutie Pie

I know that Valentine's Day was over a week ago, but I had to post this picture that my sister-in-law posted of her daughter Lucy. She is adorable and has this long tuft of hair on the top of her head that can evidently be molded into anything. Doesn't she look like Cindy Lou Who?

Turns Earned

Our last day in Utah we decided to go explore some of the backcountry outside of Alta ski resort. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the views were awesome. The snow was, well, variable. We skied in everything from powder, to corn snow, to corn snow with a breakable crust on top. Yeah, the wicked breakable crust on tele, we both had some great wrecks. We did manage to ski pretty decently considering the variable snow conditions. It was a great day to earn turns.

Bryan on the way up

The view into Brighton ski resort

The view into Little Cottonwood

The final climb up the ridge

Devil's Castle in the distance

You can see the tracks where someone skied this, crazy

Our route down: interesting corn snow with or without a breakable crust

Bryan headed down, like a pro on tele. He took off so fast I had a hard time getting a decent video of him.


Me on the descent. Unfortunately, right after Bryan stopped filming, I had a good wipe-out.

Lander the Powderhound

The first thing that Lander said when we got off the ski lift was "I need to go make some fresh tracks" and off he went to make some "freshies" off the groomed run. Bryan and I stared at each other in confusion and then shrugged and figured it was normal behavior for our off-spring. Somehow Lander has gleaned information from our conversations that the only snow worth seeking out is powder. He is a total powderhound. Hey, it's never too early to learn that important truth. We all had a great day at Alta. Lander would try to go off the main trail as much as possible and Bryan and I took turns sneaking off to Devil's Castle. The family that skis together, stays together.

Lander hitting the "freshies"

Yuppie Skiing

"I don't think we fit in here." That was exactly what I told Bryan as we rode the gondola at Deer Valley resort this morning. I have never skied at a resort that has a gondola. I have never skied at Deer Valley, mainly because the tickets are horrendously expensive and it's what I call a "destination resort". This translates to tons of people in $2000 ski suits that will only ski when it is sunny and the runs are groomed. I knew this since Deer Valley was rated the "#1 ski resort in North America" by various ski magazines and their criteria on what makes a resort "good" are the number of salons, clothing stores, restaurants and stores that sell $2000 ski suits a resort has and not important things like expert terrain and annual snowfall. After three hours of riding numerous lifts and gawking at multi-million dollar homes we finally found a pocket of good snow that of course, you had to work to get to. But, it was sooo worth it. Oh yeah, and the only other tele skiers we saw, were on ski patrol. Figures.

Riding the gondola, wow I feel like a rock star!
Dropping into Daley Bowl from the corniced ridge

Me coming down Daley Bowl

Happy Single Awareness Day

When I was in high school and college I thought that Valentine's Day was the lamest holiday ever. I pretty much still feel the same way now. I did in fact call it Single Awareness Day, or S.A.D., I mean that is what it really is right? I will admit that it's really fun to buy stuff for Lander and make it fun for him and that is so much fun, but Bryan and I don't buy into the whole flowers, dinner, blah, blah, blah. Call me unromantic, whatever. Bryan asked me what I wanted for S.A.D., I told him I wanted to go to Utah. When we arrived in Utah on Thursday our friend Phil asked me if Bryan had a romantic date planned for us. I told him that if his idea of romance was going to Alta to shred the gnar, then yes, we did indeed have a romantic date planned. And that is exactly what we did. There had just been a recent dump of snow and while most of the good runs had been tracked out, we managed to find some awesome powder stashes, but we had to work really hard to get to them. They were totally worth it and hey, tele skiers are supposed to work for their turns. Bryan skied his 7th day on tele skis and was skiing way better than I did on my 7th day on tele, jerk :).

Here is Bryan coming down East Greeley Bowl



We started doing the traverse into Devil's Castle. It was an awesome area to ski, but it took about 20 minutes of traversing and climbing on your skis to get to the good snow. The most amusing part of the traverse was watching two out of shape college girls who had drunk too much beer at lunch hurling chunks on the side of the trail. They were way worse off than we were having just come from sea level.

On the traverse in Devil's Castle, the most awesome feature at Alta

We realized after several exhausting traverses from the west side into Devil's Castle that there was a traverse in from the east side that was a lot less tiring. And the snow? It was deep and barely tracked. This was where we spent the rest of the afternoon. This is me coming down the stash we found, so much fun.


I can't think of a better way to celebrate S.A.D.. Thanks honey for the good times, I love you!

Panorama

We took this panorama picture a few weeks ago on our hike to Cape Horn. It was a rare sunny January day in the northwest. Hmm, haven't seen one of those days in a long time.

Snowed In

So all the fun snow we received on Saturday turned into a mess on Sunday and made it impossible to get out. Yes, we skipped church (incidentally a lot of church meetings were canceled in Utah as well due to snow so we weren't too far off). Evidently, so did everyone else that lives out here in the sticks with us. It's strange because most of our ward lives in town and doesn't get snow, just rain. I am sure that they think we are all complete wusses. Our road is almost impossible to drive on with the foot of snow we got. The thought of a one mile trudge up the road to our house on my skis in a skirt after church didn't sound too appealing. We actually spent the day trying to dig ourselves out and thanks to my neighbors Reuben and Dave and their tractors, the road was drive-able by Sunday afternoon. There was still quite a bit of snow on the road and I had to use some of my long lost 4wd skills to get back up it on Monday, but it was oh so much fun :)

Bryan and the kids building a snow cave

Sunset

Alpenglow

My Monday project: dig out a tire track in our driveway so we could get up it. It was an awesome 2 hour upper body workout.

Winter Wonderland

Today Bryan and I lucked out. Lander had a 2.5 hour birthday party which left us with a bunch of free time to ourselves. Since it was pouring rain in the valley we decided that going for a bike ride was not on the "A" list of things to do. Slogging around in the rain on the bike is something that I personally am getting quite tired of. However, it was dumping snow at our house. After a more than precarious drive over to Landers friends house we headed up to a a dirt road by our house that is now covered in about 3 feet of snow. Donning our skis and snowshoes we headed out. It was perfect. The road is closed to motorized traffic during the winter (i.e. no stinky, noisy snowmobiles) and it was quiet and serene. I could have stayed out there for hours. Unfortunately, we only and about 90 minutes since we had to stop and help a bunch of people out who a) never learned how to drive in the snow, or b) think that mini-vans will go up the steepest, snowiest road in Washougal. It was a good time, and a really good work-out. If anyone ever wants to come up snowshoeing or XC skiing, give us a call.

Bryan ready to go

Me at our turnaround point

I love the winter, but the flowered skis give me warm thoughts

Our track in, it was pretty deep

When we picked up Lander this FJ Cruiser got stuck on the hill we had just come up and had to be towed by a 4 wheeler. No comment.

Sunset

Land Cruiser

Yes, the seemingly out-of-control child is mine. I honestly think he has the widest skiing stance I have ever seen outside of international downhill ski competition. If you can't understand what he's saying, he's yelling "on the left" as he careens down the hill. Notice, he's really not on anyones left, he's on their right. We'll have to have a little chat about that. Don't worry, if you are ever in his way he will let you know.

Since I let Lander play hooky from school, he thought I was cool enough to ride the lift with him

Knackered

The Perfect Weekend

This weekend did not disappoint. Saturday I got to bike and ski, two of my favorite things in one day. We headed to Meadow's for some night skiing and the conditions were great. It was lightly snowing and kind of windy, but the wind was blowing snow into Two Bowl perfectly so that each run had fresh snow. This day also marked Bryan's sixth day on telemark skis. He is getting good. He likes to go fast, which makes for some spectacular wipe-outs. Lander had a great time in his lesson despite the wind and snow. I took this short video before it got dark (he's the kid with the mondo blue helmet).

Sunday proved to be beautiful (as always it's nice here on Sunday's when we have to go to church!). After church, and a nap (soooo tired from the day before), we took a family hike up to the Cape Horn lookout which is across the canyon from our house. It was windy and cold, but we all had a great time.

Lander and I under the blown over tree

View of Multnomah Falls

View of our house from the trail, you can barely see it through the trees.

Mmmmm, Creamy

That pretty much describes my day. I headed up to Meadow's to go skiing this morning and was greeted my sunshine in Hood River that created the most spectacular rainbow across the Columbia River (of course I forgot the camera so I have no pictures of this). There was no traffic on Hwy 35 up to the resort and the drive was great except for the minor fishtailing incident that almost made me spin out (mental note: don't be so stubborn next time and put it in 4WD before you need it!). It was snowing at the resort, what could be better. I did manage to slip on some ice and yard sale all my ski gear in the parking lot. I landed on my hip pretty hard and I am certain I will be able to feel it tomorrow. Yes, I can walk in ski boots and somehow miraculously one day a week I can garner all my coordination into making a FEW marginal tele turns. These kind of things just always happen to me, and of course it was right in front of a bunch of teenage boys. It was like a high school nightmare all over again.

I thought I would be skiing solo, but ran into my fellow PMR buddy Jason Mitchell in the lift line so I spent the morning chasing three very fast skiers! It was awesome and exhausting. I tend to ski better when I am forced to push my limits. I, of course, had a few good wrecks, but there were some runs where I actually didn't crash, or have to stop because my legs were tired. The snow was, well, creamy is a good way to describe it. It was good for carving and not terribly bumpy and super fun to ski in and there was some good powder in the bowls. I skied for a few hours and then headed home in time to get Lander off the school bus.

Tomorrow Bryan and I are taking Lander up for a ski lesson in the afternoon. He is really excited about it and has been asking me about it all afternoon. We even watched a Warren Miller movie together. That probably wasn't a good idea since Lander is already prone to being the extreme daredevil, he doesn't need anymore ideas. He threw a fit in one of his lessons last year because the instructor wouldn't let him go into the terrain park. I am excited that he is excited to ski and I love to see the smile on his face as he cruises down the hill. More than anything I am glad that skiing is an activity that our whole family can enjoy.

The New Never Budge Hill

Some of my fondest memories as a child are of Never Budge Hill. The hill was on the back acre of my parents property and was aptly named after us, the Budge's. This was where I learned to ski and had many hours of snowplowing and sledding fun. My brothers would carry my skis up for me, help me get locked in and then give me a "gentle" shove to get going. When we wanted some more speed and a change of scenery, we headed to the icy driveway with our Flexible Flyer and had competitions to see who could make it all the way to the bottom, without going into traffic.

This morning we were greeted by 6" of new snow and a phone call at 8:00 a.m. indicating that school was canceled, SNOW DAY! Normally, I would have packed Lander and our ski stuff into my truck and headed to the resort, but I thought it would be fun to stay here and have some good old fashioned winter fun right outside our front door. Our driveway is pretty long and steep at the top so it is great for sledding, just like Budge Hill. In honor of my new last name, I promptly named our hill Budge-maier Hill, kind of fusion of the old and the new. The neighbor kids came over and we had a fantastic time racing each other down the driveway. We went off the road a lot, got flipped off our sleds and ended up with snow in our faces, jackets and boots. What an awesome way to spend a day off from school. Sadly, this is the northwest and now it is raining on our beautiful snow. I am sure it will be gone in a day or two. Bummer.

Yeah, it's windy here. It packed the snow up against our garage door.

Lander and Cameron getting ready for some fun

Budge-maier Hill. It's a lot steeper than it looks.

4 kids +2 sleds=Likely they won't all make it down
See the following video

Christmas Highlights

I thought I would post some of the highlights of our trip to Utah for Christmas. To sum it up in three words: skiing, eating, family. We all had a great time.

Lander opening one of his many presents

Yes, this went on for a while

Christmas morning. A huge dump of snow came on Christmas Eve. When Lander is older we will start the new tradition of skiing on Christmas Day.

Lander making sure that Lucy gets her gift open okay

Lander and my nephew Scott playing Lincoln Logs

The beautiful stellar crystals commonly seen in Utah. Sitting on the ski lift you feel like you are in the center of a snow globe.

The moon rising over Provo Canyon after an evening run

Lander doing his best to eliminate all the ice puddles in Idaho, such a boy thing

Learning that my dad keeps track of all the vermin he exterminates, priceless.