The First Snow

Christmas Day while we were at my aunt's house, it started snowing and never stopped. Snow was on the ground and the boys were itching to play in it. A couple of days later I finally relented and went out there with them. They love the outdoors!

 Brecken ate tons of snow. You would have thought he was hungry or thirsty or something with the amount that he ate.

 Attempting to explain to Brecken how to make a snow angel.

 And he ate more snow. And more snow. And more snow.

Then we went inside to get warm and work on our inside chores after a fun time outside.

One of Like Three Snow Days

It randomly snowed on March 1st. Enough that it stuck around for about half a day. I had a feeling this would be my last opportunity to throw Brecken out there so he could experience snow. We got back from our weekly library time and I quickly gathered his stuff, threw it one and stuck him out there. He loved it!

I just love this little boy so much. He wondered around for a while. Had to try out the snow by licking his glove, fell and acted like he couldn't get up and just loved it. After our short romp in the snow, we had to get ready to go to Cami's house for the afternoon. Now he loves that girl cousin of his, so we packed up the snow gear so she could experience it too. Unfortunately, she was taking a nap and by the time she woke up, the snow was all gone.

I do have to admit, this was the BEST winter ever. Snowed about 2-3 times, rained, and was overall completely bearable. My favorite to date. I am not a huge fan of you snow.

Fifteen days later we had these beauties blooming in my flowerbeds. Crocus, I sure love you! You bring sunshine to my day.

Snow Much Fun

After snowed, Gunnar insisted that he needed to go out and play at 7:30am. I told him it was way to cold but he insisted. We got him out of his jammies, into day clothes, put a coat on and snow boots and I let him quickly run in the front yard while I got the newspaper. He ran in a few quick circles, threw some snow in the air and decided that it was way to cold and ran back in. I warned him. After that, he begged to go out. I hate going out in the cold so I told him dad would go after work. It gets dark right after Jeff gets home but thankfully that day, Jeff got off 1/2 hours earlier. They had fun, the way that boys do. They wanted to build a snowman but the snow was way to dry.

They were shoveling the yard for snow for the snowman that never took place. Shovels are always fun for little boys.

I decided to let Diesel out front for the fun. He needs to learn to stick around and have fun with the family instead of down the road in someone elses yard. We have never owned a dog that just sticks around the family. Fences are a must. So I am determined to train him well off leash in our yard. So far he loves being with us and is starting to listen better. He at least knows his name now so he knows who we are yelling at...him.

We have him now to where he will sit waiting for his toys until we say "fetch". He also comes back for the most part unless he is just done with the game. He also sits and waits in his kennel and when we feed him until we tell him he can go ahead. He learns pretty quickly. Oh ya, he is also mostly potty trained but has a few accidents here and there. I read that a dog is not fully potty trained until they have not had any accidents for like 6 months. Interesting. Anyway, he does well and tries hard. He now goes potty on command which is awesome when it is super cold outside. He's learning. This next picture I took on a very wrong setting on the camera, but the result was pretty cool.

What was I doing during the fun. I was warmly indoors making dinner and watching extreme christmas light decorating. My type of entertainment.

Holy Snowly!

All weekend the news station kept warning that a huge storm would be coming through the Treasure Valley. It was to last from 5pm Saturday night to 11am Sunday morning. It started right around 5pm like clockwork. Saturday night, Jeff and I were talking about how church is never cancelled. It just never happens. I told him about my friend, Kimberly in WA, and how church was cancelled for them a couple of weeks ago.

So it kepts snowing through the night like predicted. Jeff is the Elder's Quorum President in our ward so at about 8am, he activated the committees in the quorum to start a snow shoveling effort. At about 11am (it was still snowing pretty good), he quickly came home to give me the phone and told me to start calling my Visiting Teaching ladies because church was cancelled. The Stake President decided that it was just too snowy to go out. Jeff was then back out shoveling snow. Caldwell tends to see a lot more snow than the Boise area. In some parts of Caldwell, we can get some pretty big snowdrifts. We go to church at 1pm, so Sunday morning I spent a couple of hours finalizing my combined YW lesson for the fast Sunday. Right when I was done, that was when Jeff swung by. I guess I have an extra week to work more on it if I wanted to. At about 1pm, the sun was already out and the conditions were drastically changing. We got about 6 inches of snow yesterday. Today the sky is blue and the temperature is actually pretty nice. Winter has such crazy weather.

My Mockorange bush. The snow was kind of wet and heavy, so I really liked how it appeared on this bush.

Gunnar's Fun

I definately have a little snow boy on my hands. He loves the snow. It could get on his face, get in his boots, or get his hands cold and he laughs about it. Most of the time when we would get back from snowboarding, we would take Gunnar out in the snow. He looked like a little overstuffed marshmallow in his clothes. He loved this welcomed change from staying inside with Grandma while we were gone during the day.

The first time he went out it was with my sister Heidi and I. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and sunny. This was one of my very favorite pictures of him. I love the sun and shadows in this picture.

Me and Gunnar

The second time he went out, it was with Grandpa. The ride was a little more extreme than before and very exciting.

My dad attached a rope to the sled so he could pull it better.

My dad also threw him really high into this really powdery snow bank. Gunnar just sunk right in. He was buried and stuck and could not see us.

The last time that he went out was with Jeff. The weather was quite snowy but equally as fun and the ride became quite extreme.

Jeff pushed the sled up a huge (kind of steep) snowbank and let go...

I am love with this picture of the two most important boys in my life.

This is my final picture and probably my favorite. Gunnar had just face planted it in the snow but he still loved every minute of it.

ONE FUN WEEK

As I have sort of eluded to in previous posts, I spent the last week in McCall, Idaho It is a smaller resort type town in the mountains of Idaho. It is about 2 hours from Boise, our capital city. My parents are part of a timeshare so they booked it for one entire week. The plan was to have my parents, sister/brother in law, brother, and sister there. We were going to be there the week prior to when the McCall Winter Festival starts. Our plan was the be there for the opening days and then get out of town before the 50,000 arrived. Having that many people there probably triples the towns population. The lady at one of two local grocery stores told us that during the second week, their shelves get bare. They just simply have a hard time keeping up with the demand.

It all started on Sunday. We left right after church and Gunnar left with my parents before church. We ended up driving pretty much in the dark there. We had such a nice drive and were making pretty good time. We turned on the first of two main roads we needed to get there. It was of course snowy. I clearly remember Jeff speeding up and saying that he was "testing" out the car. We drive a 2000 Passat with 4-motion (all wheel drive), so this thing is awesome in the snow. However it is NOT awesome on the ice. McCall had been dumped with about 4 feet of snow about a week before and was having a hard time keeping up with the roads, roofs, etc. So this particular road and incredibly deep ruts in it. Let me just say that we started sliding all of the way down the road, Jeff could not get it corrected and we slammed really fast into a gigantic snow bank on the left front side of the car. I WAS TICKED!! I was so mad. I tried calling my dad. The phones have a tuff time getting reception up there. We had just switched to their plan 2 days before so I was about ready to throw the phone in the snow because I could not reach anyone. The car was not moving, the wheels were all spinning. Finally these super nice people stopped to help. They of course were prepared. They had a shovel with them, tow rope and chains. They tried and tried to pull the car out but we found out the the car was completely high centered on the snow. All of the wheels were turning and nothing. The other problem was that their Tahoe was going nowhere but turning their wheels on the ice. Basically what happened was that the lady and I stood on the side of the road watching as our husbands kept shoveling out the car, chaining up the Tahoe and yanking the car out with huge jerks. Thankfully we found out we have a tow hook on the back of our car. The bumper had seperated slightly from the front of the car but that was the only damage. We were incredibly thankful for them. The next day we ended up seeing them up at Brundage. The next morning we also looked at our bumper and it went back into place. I should have gotten a picture of this 'problem' but I was waaaay to frustrated to even think about it.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day and the plan was to go up to Brundage Ski Resort. I am so in love with this resort. It is a fairly nice sized resort but it has the small community feel to it. About 45 minutes from McCall is the world renowned (and expensive) Tamarack Resort. Having that so close has really made Brundage that much more homier. It has better snow than our one hour away Bogus Basin Resort and the drive is so nice to get up there. My sister and I timed the drive from the condo to the mountain. It was 20 minutes and just about 10 minutes more in snowier conditions. Love it!! We were lucky enough to have about 100 people on the mountain during the weekdays. It was great. The weather was COLD the first day. It was about 10 degrees in town and about 4-5 on the mountain. The first day was slightly snowy. But the snow was not typical. It was what I called Tinkerbell's Fairy Dust type snow. It was just like glitter in the air. I tried to get a picture of it and this was the best that I could do.

I took my camera with me about everyday but the first day I just had to get a picture of the view. I took off my left glove to get the camera out and take a picture, put the camera back and took off. I had thinner gloves underneath so a few yards down on a really steep part of the hill, I felt my left hand being a little cold and drafty. Hello...I had forgotten my glove up the hill. I had to take of my board and starting hiking up. The cold weather made it hurt to breath and my sister kept yelling to me wondering what was taking so long and that I needed to keep going. Luckily a skier spotted a lonely glove, looked down to see me hiking and brought it too me. Never again will I do that.

I am pretty sure this was the picture that I took when I also left my glove.

The second and third days were absolutely fantastic. The runs were groomed and the sky was completely clear and blue. It was warm at about 25ish degrees. Jeff missed out. He had to go back to work but was planning on coming back up on Friday. He just started his job at the end of last year and did not have the time yet. On Wednesday, I caught an edge twice on the same stupid cat track and fell right on both of my butt cheeks. It HURT so bad. I have never been in so much pain there. I had a hard time just sleeping on my back because of it. It was so hard that I know that my brain bounced around in my head a little. Brundage also has a guy that will ski the mountain and take pictures of anyone along the way. The crowds were so non- existant that he followed our group around for quite a while. He was able to get a great group picture of all of is. He was also able to get some great pictures of the guys doing tricks/jumps in the terrain park. My dad bought the CD, so when I get the pictures I will post some. There is this great sequence of my brother in law Ren on a rail. First it looks like he is doing great, second picture the same, third picture is him in the middle of a fall on the rail. This fall was so hard right on his tailbone. Quite funny now. We also have video of my dad on a rail. The only problem is that he hit chest first and bounced off. It is so painful to watch. Thursday we all decided to take a little break. We were all in so much pain from some fall or another that we needed a much need break. But Friday morning we were back up there again. It was so nice to beable to snowboard for a couple to a few hours and then go back to a warm condo. We did not feel obligated in anyway to go a full day because of our season passes. It was great.

I love this picture of Heidi. She has pictures of me on her camera that I will have to post later.

This picture was taken on the Bear Chair as we were headed up. I just had to freak my sister out. I took off my glove and took out the camera while my sister was adamantly telling me that I was bound to drop them both. It was fun to scare her.

Friday night Jeff showed up without my little sister because her fiance got really sick. She decided to stay behind and we were all bummed. Saturday we were back on the mountain, this time it was slightly windy, extremely snowy and very foggy. Heidi twisted her knee really bad on the first run so we decided to go a couple more and go back. The powder this day was just awesome though. I love knowing that if you fall, it will be a great soft landing. We were both a little sad because this will probably be the last time we snowboard for some time. We are both hoping that we will have babies before the next season. We will see. :)

Everyone had such a great time and I was so happy to be able to spend a lot of time with my sister Heidi doing something we both love to do.

Yes! Snow

I just had to post about what I just heard on the news. We are headed up to the mountain resort town of McCall Idaho this Sunday for a week. We are planning on snowboarding about everyday and enjoying the start of the McCall Winter Festival on the weekend. The weather report just stated that McCall should be 6 new inches of snow this weekend. That equals powder for the mountains.

Snow Day!

This morning we woke up and found lots of fresh snow on the ground. What better fun than to play in it. I figured Gunnar would have a great time playing while I shoveled the sidewalks.

Last year I found this great Step2 Penguin Sled. It has been so much fun and it is so cute! Gunnar loves it. He totally fits into it but he decided that he would slouch down with his legs out like this.

Gunnar trying to get into by himself.

He finally made it.

Gunnar kept trying to pick up the snow with his little mitten hands and eat it. Does not really work when one is all bundled up.

Snow and lots of it!

It snowed alot on Saturday the 22nd and it was really pretty. I looked outside and saw how it fell on our Christmas lights and garland so I had to take a picture. I just loved how it glowed through the snow.

Brundage Mountain Here We Come

This last weekend, Jeff and I were able to get away for a weekend snowboarding trip. We went with my sister and brother in law, Heidi and Ren, my dad, and my brother Brent. We all have season passes, so this will be a regular accurance this year. My parents have a timeshare up in McCall, so we drove up Friday night and stayed over through Saturday. The rest of my family went up Friday morning and were able to get an extra day of boarding in. Unfortunately Jeff has to work until 5pm on Fridays and could not get away any earlier. Where was Gunnar you ask? He was with my mom and my sister Mindy who went over there for the weekend. He just loved it. All of the attention on him all of the time. I was told that he did not ask for me once...could care less where I was. Gotta love him. Friday night it started to snow. YEESSSS! That is exactly what we wanted. Saturday morning it was still snowing and perfect for the mountain. It snowed the entire day, creating great snow/powder. The buddy system was perfect. Jeff and Brent were together...they actually know what they are doing, can get down the mountain in style and actually do some tricks. My dad and Ren were together...they started learning last year, can actually consistantly turn, and are more willing to hurt themselves to try something cool. Heidi and I were together...we have been boarding inconsistantly for about 7 years, can't really do anything, afraid at trying new things and not willing to hurt ourselves. We all split up and had a great time. Heidi and I would just take our time down different runs and practice different moves. We would run into the others once in a while but not often. We pretended to know how to jump off little bumps, but if you saw what we were doing you would laugh. It was hilarious. I have a couple of pictures because Jeff had the camera most of the time. We will have to get more pictures of our actual skills the next time around. We will be up there for 1 week straight for the McCall Winter Festival in January! Until then...

My dad and brother in law Ren, all getting ready to go.

My brother Brent. He cracks us all up. He bought this new snowboarding get up that is gold and white in color. The helmet is this chrome color and we could spot him from afar easily with the color of his goggles. The bottom of his board also has brass knuckles embedded on both ends. Can we say, Pimp My Snowboard or what.

I am so not sure why I look like this. All that I know is that my sister had already put on her gloves, so I had to put the car keys in her coat pocket, zip up her coat, I think that I may have also buckled her helmet on. We had so much fun together.