Don't forget Maven

Since I'm playing catchup I'd better not forget Maven. While home for vacation he had a few firsts.

FIRST RICE CEREAL

FIRST TIME PLAYING IN THE SNOW

Bad Luck

While I'm playing catch up on the blog I'd better not forget to document our BAD LUCK!!! Since this is posting in reverse order you haven't read about our beautiful day of skiing on Christmas Eve. I think there must be some rule about skiing that if the conditions are perfect something else is bound to go wrong. Between the four snowmobiles we had up there with us three of them were having problems. That may have been a blessing in disguise since it lead us to Magog.

Anyway, even worse than the snowmobile problems... as we headed up Tony Grove on the snowmobile Brad noticed his arm pocket to his coat wasn't zipped up. This wouldn't have been that big of deal other than that is the pocket he leaves his keys in and sure enough his keys were no longer in his pocket. We ignored this thinking they were back by the vehicles and continued to enjoy a beautiful day of skiing.

When we got back down to the vehicles we were disappointed to find no keys anywhere. Since we were on vacation and we weren't smart enough to bring two sets of keys we were in trouble.

We hitched a ride out of the canyon and stopped at Brad's cousins where we thought Brad's parents were. Once again Larry and Kevin to the rescue. We crashed the Johnson's Christmas Eve dinner and Kevin got Brad back up the canyon to meet the Beazer Lock and Key guy. We were lucky he was able to make a key for us on Christmas Eve.

Like my dad always says STUPID HURTS!!!

The Backside of the BEAV

Since high school I've wanted to ski the backside of Beaver but I never knew what I was doing so it didn't happen until two weeks ago. Brad and I were spending the day at the Beav desperately looking for someone else who wanted to ski the backside and could shuttle with us. We were lucky enough to run into Brad's Uncle Larry and Cousin Kevin.

So we started boot packing to second peak so we could ski the "land of milk and honey" I know it sounded cheesy to me too but once I floated through the beautiful powder I couldn't agree more with the name.

This is my first 5 footer!!!

It was a soft powder landing :)

This was Brad's 5 footer...

He can't say the same about his landing.

It's a BLUEBIRD

Since I've known Brad he has tried to explain to me the incredible feeling of skiing fresh powder. He loves this so much he is crazy enough to go backcountry hike or what we refer to as skinning up the mountain and ski down in places where no tracks have yet been laid. Brad has been collecting gear for me over the last two years; however, living in Iowa made it difficult for us to get a lot of skiing in and every time we made it back to Cache Valley the Avalanche danger was extremely high with horrible snow conditions. So needless to say my backcountry skiing experience has been in not the best of powder.

But on Christmas Eve I finally got my perfect bluebird ski day.

You always think you are going to die on the first trip up. It's by far the worst but once you are up and can see the beautiful view you forget how awful the hike was and get excited for the trip down.

This is Eric one of Brad's ski buddies. Notice the peak behind him. After we skied down from where he is standing we decided to take advantage of the perfect conditions and hike that peak known as Magog. I'll be honest I didn't think I'd make it all the way up there but once we got going I couldn't stop and decided I didn't care how steep the top was I was going to ski MAGOG!!!

I made it to the top and it was totally worth it. These two pictures are taken from the same rock. Brad and I hiked Magog on the 4th of July 2008.

This was the first picture we ever took together.

Can you tell which tracks are mine and which ones are Brad's?

It was an incredible day of skiing and I can now officially say I am ADDICTED to POWDER. The harder the hike the better the skiing.

Merry Christmas

That's right we already had our Christmas. We will be in Idaho and Utah from the 17-26 and decided we wanted to do our own thing and not haul everything there and back. The Jeep is crowded enough as it is when we travel with all our ski gear.

MAVEN WAKING UP CHRISTMAS MORNING

HE'S SO EXCITED TO OPEN PRESENTS

PATIENTLY WAITING BY THE CHRISTMAS TREE

OPENING HIS FIRST PRESENT

SPORTIN' HIS NEW HAT

Merry Christmas to everyone we hope the holidays are amazing for you all. Can't wait to see the family!!

Fifty Dollars

Fifty dollars may not seem like a lot of money to most people ... but to poor students who dish out way too much money for med school and watch as our debt continually increases with ridiculously high interest rates ... IT'S A LOT!!!

For Christmas this year I gave Brad a $50 bill as his budget. I did this for two reasons.

#1 I didn't want him to spend a lot of money

#2 Being a banker and the crazy person that monitors our accounts the way I do it's really hard for Brad to surprise me without me knowing.

While at work on Friday I received a phone call from Wyoming Medical Center Security about Brad Oliverson's wallet being turned in. First I was confused on why they would be calling me at work. Then I remembered giving Brad one of my business cards. Somehow they must of made the connection and decided I was who they needed to call.

I left messages on Brad's phone and he was finally able to go pick up his wallet when he got out of surgery around 6 o'clock. And to his great disappointment the $50 bill was gone. WHO DOES THAT? His wallet was in his white coat in the doctors lounge. The wallet was taken out and the lab coat was stashed under a bunch of other white coats.

Sad thing is... earlier this year my purse was stolen at church. Maybe we just get too comfortable at certain places and think the best of people. Why would any of the doctors or nurses take a wallet and obviously you trust people at church.

And both times we had cash. I'm addicted to credit card reward points so I never carry cash and neither does Brad. Isn't it ironic that it can take up to a year of our frugal spending to get enough reward points to earn $50.

The Little Man

HE SURE LOOKS LIKE HE'S SICK OF MOM

ALWAYS HAVING A CAMERA IN HIS FACE

Brad is so excited for winter he can hardly stand it. There isn't enough snow in Casper to ski yet so we decided to go to Bridle Falls, one of our favorite places in Casper. see bridle falls posts And it is now an ICY water fall.

THAT'S MAVEN HIDING INSIDE BRAD'S

COAT NOT THE THANKSGIVING TURKEY

OUR LITTLE MAN IS THREE MONTHS OLD

Time fly's when you are having fun and already Maven is three months old. He's rolled over once but we are still waiting for a repeat so we can believe it. He's had his first haircut, he sleeps through the night and he is a perfect little angel for the babysitters when mom has to go to work. The whole working thing is obviously a lot harder on me than him.

He wanted me to take a sick day today and stay home with him so he decided to get a horrible cold that turned into croup, and that is why I finally get to catch up on the blog. I do have to brag about how good he is. He's still smiling and having fun even though he feels horrible.