So, where were we? Oh yes..sledding.
Sledding is our main daily activity most days at Bear Lake...it got COLD after it finished snowing, and the snow wasn't melting off the dirt roads around the neighborhood. It made things a little scary for driving, but it also meant that we could sled down the street right next to our cabin, instead of walking farther off the beaten path. This was very helpful, especially since Cora is only good outside for about 15 or 20 minutes if the temperatures are below freezing.
My mom is awesome and took a lot of pictures on the trip, like this one:
We didn't go skiing on Tuesday as planned since it was FRIGID and WINDY. My sister Amanda and her husband Matt came up, and brought their new baby Emmy with them. It was fun for us all to take turns holding the baby, and I think Amanda enjoyed a little time off of holding the baby too. So, win-win!
The temperature that day was -20 with wind chill, which is probably as cold as I have ever been. We tried an experiment or two, like the one where you boil water and then throw it up in the air and watch it turn to snow. Pretty cool (I, of course, didn't video it). The coolest thing about it was the sound it made as the water froze. It made a loud WHOOSH sound. Look it up on You Tube, pretty cool. We also tried to freeze bubbles, but it was too windy and they would blow away and pop before they had a chance to freeze properly.
We stayed inside almost all day, but the kids (and therefore the grownups) started getting a little bit of cabin fever. I was actually curious to see what -20 felt like, so we bundled up as warm as we could and did go outside and sled in the -20 wind chill. Maybe it was because my girls are very lazy and expect me to pull them UP the hill in the sled (Dax runs up himself nearly every time), but I didn't really get as cold as I expected to. Preston and me decided that since there wasn't wind in the forecast for the next day, we would go skiing even though the high for the day was only forecast for 16 at Beaver Mountain.
The next day dawned, and it was beautiful, with no clouds and no wind. Dax has been dying to come skiing, and we promised him he could learn this year. Cora opted to stay at the warm cabin, which I think was a good decision all around. So, Preston and I bundled up Dax and Arden (and ourselves) and headed for the ski slopes! We were all excited, but I started to worry a little as we drove through the canyon and our car's temperature readout said "-12"....
We got our tickets, our equipment, did a bathroom break and off we went! The sun was shining and I was busy moving, so I really didn't feel very cold at all. Our faces got cold when we went fast, but nothing too terrible.
Dax did his first skiing lesson in the morning. I saw him from time to time as we skied by the bunny hill, and I noticed that he was spending a lot of time on his cute little bum. I was surprised to see him in line for the ski lift about halfway through the morning. We rode up a little behind him, and watched him go down the hill for a bit. Dax was smiling, but his instructor was pretty much carrying him by his armpits. Hmmm...
Dax's class ended at noon, and right around then Arden's started saying her fingers were getting cold. Time for lunch! We picked up Dax from his class, and his instructor said that Dax could use some more time on the bunny hill. We headed to the lodge to eat our sandwiches. Dax was impressively hungry and ate quite a large amount of food, even for him! Arden and Dax have a strange fondness for Gatorade, and were super-excited when Preston bought them each their very own bottle to have with lunch. Before long, we were back outside!
We headed to the bunny hill to see how Dax was doing. It was soon apparent that he hadn't quite figured out the whole stopping thing...and he fell down a lot. After 2-3 times down the hill and up the magic carpet, Arden was bored so I took her on the lift while Preston stayed with Dax to help him fine-tune his pizza stop. Here is the work in progress:
Arden and I chose the wrong run to go down, and ended up back and the lift instead of back at the bunny hill, so (dangit) we had to go back up the lift and come down a different way. Arden is still a fast little skier! By the time we got back to the bunny hill, Dax was threading his way through some cones like it was his job. We told him if he could go through the cones one more time AND and stop at the bottom without any falling, we would take him on the lift. He did, so we did!
Here is a picture Preston took of Arden and me on the lift chair behind them. Did I mention how BEAUTIFUL it was?!?!
And here is my boy, he is kinda cute too:
Dax was a little intimidated on his first run without armpit help, and fell a few of times. He was quick to get back up, though, and kept on trying! We got a system worked out pretty soon. Here ere is how it went: We told Arden to wait for us at a certain place, and off she would ski. Then I would tell Dax to follow me, and I would ski a very slow and conservative back-and-forth path down the whatever hill we were on. Dax did a great job of following in my ski prints, and Preston followed behind him to pick him up if he fell. Dax did fall a couple more times, but after a few runs, he was doing great! Here we are, about to start another run down the Goat Trail, or Cottontail, our favorite runs:
Dax actually did three whole runs in a row without falling! On his first day! He is amazing.
Dax also sings while he skis. He sings "Jingle Bells." The whole time. It was kind of appropriate..."dashing through the snow," and "Oh, what fun it is to ride" and all that. What a funny kid.
After a few hours, Arden started complaining that her fingers were getting cold again. I asked Dax if he was ready to quit. "No WAY!" he said, he was nowhere near ready to be done. Preston volunteered to take Arden to the lodge for some hot chocolate while Dax and me did a couple more runs by ourselves. Dax kept saying things like "Only two more time down the Goat Trail, then two more times down Cotton Tail, then just two more times down the Goat Trail." I tried to tell him only 2 or three TOTAL, and he tried to bargain with me all the way up the ski lift.
It was SO much fun skiing with my boy! Dax and I had a great time just hanging out on the ski lift and looking at the beautiful scenery. I would hold his hand as we got off the lift each time, but he didn't really need me to, he was getting off like a pro! Then Dax would head down the hill right behind me like a little duckling. It was ridiculously fun for me for some reason, I was so proud of how well he was doing!
We did run into some trouble on our second-to-the-last run of the day. Dax was getting really confident and blew past me on one section as we were going by another family with two kids. He got out in front of the kids and was going along great, but before I could go around them, the two kids got tangled up and wiped out right in front of me. I had to bail into the powder to avoid running over them, and I am not so good in the 8-inch deep stuff and wiped out (my only fall of the day). Dax noticed I wasn't right behinid him, and turned his head around to find me, and fell down too. I got myself up, skied over to Dax and got him up too. However, he had taken the wrong fork in the path, and we were on a flat section with absolutely no momentum. We had to ski through some really deep powder to get back to some steeper terrain to avoid walking, and Dax fell again, right in the deepest section. By this time we had both been skiing all day, and it was pretty hard for us to untangle Dax's skis and get him upright. We finally got it sorted though, and we finished the run out and got back to the ski lift. Dax had gotten some snow in one of his mittens and the sun was starting to go down, so it was easier to convince him that the next run would be our last. As it was, we only left about half an hour before the resort closed. It was a fun day!
We drove back to the cabin, where Cora had been having a great time having four grown-ups AND Emmy all to herself:
It was New Years Eve (or Happy New Years Eve as my kids call it), and Cora and I had made a sign a couple of days earlier:
I had also bought a $5 "party pack" to bring up, so we decided to get the party started! We all put on our hats and posed for a picture (sorry, I tend to not wear makeup at the cabin, forgetting that their might be pictures):
We also had the mandatory sparkling cider! Cheers!
We thought about letting the kids stay up late, but Dax and Arden were so tired from a long day of skiing, that we ended up having our big "Happy New Year" moment about 3 hours early. Who cares, it is just as fun to count down, no matter what the time. The party pack came with horns to blow, some streamers to throw, and even a few party poppers! We counted down from 10, and then yelled HAPPY NEW YEAR and let the kids go crazy! It was a frenzied 5 minutes of celebrating, with all the kids (and me and Preston, of course) running back and forth yelling "Happy New Year!!" Out to the deck we would run to pull a party popper and blow our horns and yell, then back into the cabin to throw a streamer at Grandpa, then back outside for another popper and some more horn-blowing and yelling! Whew!
That little pack was $5 well spent. Maybe next year I will go crazy and get TWO of them so we can party twice as long.
After all the poppers were popped and the streamers had been streamed, we finished our sparkling cider, then herded the kids off to bed. The "grown ups" then stayed up later watching "Guardians of the Galaxy," but the parents of the 2-month-old bailed when Emmy fell asleep about half way through the movie. Grandma and Grandpa stuck it out like troopers until the movie ended around 11, but that is about 2 hours past my dad's bed time, and Preston and I were pretty tired from our busy day too, so we decided to call it a night around 11:15. Aren't we exciting!? Oh well. I was actually still up at midnight because Dax woke up having a bad dream, but I think that Preston and the other grown ups were tucked in tight by midnight. Oh well, it was a super-fun New Years Eve!!
New Years Day was pretty foggy all morning, so we just hung around the cabin, doing our usual cabin stuff. The girls got a lot of crafts for Christmas, so they made bracelets and did little sewing projects. We played a LOT of games, too. This trip's favorite games were Sequence for Kids (thanks Grandma Wilson!), Apples to Apples, Uno Attack, and of course, Headbandz.
Grandpa also set up his retro Atari game, and the kids played some old-school stuff like "Outlaw" and "Space Invaders." The kids never seemed to get to play it very long though, because only two people can play at a time, and well, we have three kids. Do you see the problem? Grandpa's rule was that once there was fighting over the game, the game went off.
The game went off a lot.
Here is a rare moment of playing, and also a shot of our cabin Christmas tree with its homemade ornaments:
The kids all sleep in the same room at the cabin, and Arden was feeling a bit crowded a couple of times. Preston would let her have his tablet, and she would find a quiet room to hide in and watch the "Buddies" movies. (For those of you lucky enough not to know, there is a whole bunch of movies about a herd of talking puppies. There is "Space Buddies," "Santa Buddies," "Spooky Buddies," "Treasure Buddies," and I don't know what else. Ask Arden, she probably knows. She loves them, but they are a little bit painful to sit through if your age is double-digits. So, having her watch the movie on the tablet was nice, since the rest of us didn't have to see or hear them!)
By the afternoon, the fog burned off and we headed out for...yup, sledding. Even Emmy came outside to watch, but as you can see she didn't appreciate the cold very much:
The lake was starting to freeze over in some spots earlier in the week, but it looked blue and watery on this day:
Here come Cora and me!
Amanda and Matt had to leave on Friday, so we all had to say goodbye to Emmy! She is such a cute little thing, and even Preston got to have a turn or two getting some snuggles in:
We finally made the trek home on Saturday. The kids were sad to come home, but I think that it was good for them to get back to their own rooms and beds. (Arden especially mentioned that she was going to like having her OWN room again).
Now we are back to school and homework and schedules and reality.
*sigh*
Only 351 more days until next Christmas!
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