....Downhill Skiing......

We have done our share of skiing this year. Well, Ivan, Liza and Greg have done our share of skiing this year. Sonja was hard at work so she missed our Mondays with Grandpa. Grandpa Larry would carpool down to Discovery with his fellow sexagenarians and septuagenarians. He graciously helped the kids on and off the lifts when the lifties were not quite paying attention and skied with us to help keep an eye on them as we skied down. Liza was the only one who suffered from the lifties slacking on the job. Once with her mom and dad she did not get loaded on the chair. She ended up waiting for us in the shack at the bottom of the hill eating the guys chocolate bar from his lunch.

Here they are getting geared up for the first downhill skiing day of the year. It was their second time trying downhill skiing if you count the one effort last year.

These photos from last year at Maverick Mountain remind me that Liza liked bonking her helmet against Ivan as much as she liked skiing. This year they both did great! By the end of the season Sonja and I each had a mini-me following in our ski tracks each run.

This year we put them in kinderski for half of the first day. They did not get as much attention as expected but had fun and became comfortable with the magic carpet.

I suspect that Ivan is politely telling the girl in the pink that her goggles are not on correctly.

Steve and Ayla posing.

Greg and Liza...

Snow bunnies.

Sledding...

We found the local sledding hill and enjoyed a few days on the hill in the snow.

The Janzens came by to visit. It was a beautiful sunny day.

Liza and Ayla traded mothers for a bit.

Brandy and Liza above and Ayla and Sonja below.

We had a bunch of races down the hill. Ayla acted as "the girl at the bottom who says GO!"

The next photos are from a colder day at the same hill. It was around zero with 15-20 mph winds.

Sonja and Ivan like to scope out the course and visualize the run before competition.

And he's off!

This is Liza getting chased by a wolf. Darn those wolves! Why can't we just hunt them all the time? On second glance, that may just be a Boxer.

Maggie got some training runs in. It reminded her of her old skijoring days with Hobie

The old days with Hobie:

These are from a hill on the road from Anaconda to Wisdom, MT.

We usually take a break in the van for snacks and warming up.

And then back to sledding.

There is always time for snow angels.

Winter highlights

We have enjoyed winter thoroughly this year. We missed mentioning Sonja's next step toward adulthood. She turned 21 in December. Four more years and her car insurance rates will drop. Boy will that be nice. In the meantime we celebrated in the normal 21 year old fashion.


Ice cream and cake with our 3 and 5 year old children!

We gave her a new wetsuit for her birthday.

Liza learned to wink just for the special occasion.

Happy Birthday Sonja!

Christmas 2009!

We know that we are actually posting this in March but that is so that we can take full advantage of the 2010 Christmas shopping season. It should be starting any day now.
Our season started with home made hats.

It continued with decorating.

Here we are making cookies to deliver to all of the neighbors we still have not met. We did not meet many of our neighbors because we ate most of the cookies and decided that delivering an empty paper plate and forcing them to listen to our caroling was not the way to make a first impression. From our caroling experience we recommend "We wish you a merry Christmas!" sung quickly and enthusiastically. Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer was waaaaay too long and made both performers and forced listeners clearly uncomfortable.
We went to cousins in Salt Lake City to celebrate part of the time. I do not know if this is a photo of elves or what.

Finally a posed picture for posterity. Happy Holidays come and gone!

Happy Solstice!

Our anniversary and Sonja's birthday are right in the middle of the holiday season. We intended on skiing into Hogan's cabin to celebrate both. We do not have any pictures of the celebrating, or cabin for that matter. The cabin has a combination lock and we neglected to write the combination down before we left civilization. Luckily Sonja remembered our forgetfulness before we had skiied the whole 6 mile approach. We ended up returning to the van and spending the night in a rental cabin just down the road from our old house in Whiskey Gulch. We did enjoy some nice sledding and snow-angel making out in the middle of nowhere.

King for a day

I did a search for "king for a day lyrics" and several came back. Based on your age you may recognize these lyrics: age 15-20 years, 20-30 years , 30-40 years (click on years and scroll down to watch the video). I do not know the demographics on this one but it is kind of catchy............... Okay I am back. I just finished break-dancing and doing the robot to my age appropriate "King for a Day" song. After watching the Thompson Twins video I also got a haircut.

We had another birthday to celebrate and it involved trains big and small.

The small train was Ivan's birthday present.

The big train was the Copper King Express. It is a pleasurable ride beginning just a few blocks from our house. I think we rode on its final trip. It had a couple of more rides scheduled after ours but they may have been cancelled due to weather. It was nice. Santa and the Grinch were both part of the trip. The kids each had their own response to seeing Santa approaching our booth.

Ivan seems excited and pretty confident that he is on the good list.

Liza had more of a detached, "I hope he does not see me, I am not positive which list I am on and I would like to improve my qualifications for the good list before I talk to him and force him into a decision" look about her.

As birthdays should, this one came with numerous presents.

One was a nifty Firehouse wooden piggy bank. It involved some assembly.

A little hammering.

Our rule around here is: Once you turn five years old, that's it you're out of the house. At least three mornings a week anyway. Ivan started preschool the day before his birthday. He was psyched to start and still likes it a lot.

Carving pumpkins leads to ...

After all that practice with those safety knives it is time to break out the real stuff.
Time for a Butterfly and Pirate SWORD FIGHT!