Brad and Charlie

27 February, 2011

MIA

We'll we've kind of been MIA we've been keeping pretty busy and to be quite honest blogging is the last thing on my mind when I get home from work at night.

However, I was able to take a few days off work and go with Brad to Jackson for a medical conference, and everything happened to work out so my family could meet us there.

We took a sleigh ride through the elk refuge.

Maven enjoyed it at first but ended up falling asleep pretty quick.

We went to a Moose hockey game and Maven LOVED it!!!

And Brad loved THIS!!!

They were also having a big air show that we were able to see.

It was a toss up to see who got the most attention between
Maizie and Maven but I think Maizie won :)

06 January, 2011

We had a wonderful week long vacation in Idaho and Utah. We enjoyed skiing and being with family. We came back on Sunday the 26th and Monday I was back to work FULL-TIME. And since then I've been behind on everything. My amazing mom came to help out for a week. She babysat Maven since the babysitter is still on vacation.

I love my job but I love being with Maven even more so this hasn't been an easy transition for me. I feel like I can't be 100% at anything. My focus isn't on work like it used to be and when I'm home all I want to do is play with Maven so my house isn't as clean as I'd like it to be and obviously the blog has been neglected. Not that anyone reads it anyway.

I had the day off so I could take Maven to his four month check-up so by some miracle I've managed to get five posts in one day.

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.

14 December, 2010

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