27 weeks: Little Baby

 Little Baby is 27 weeks old! That means that we are happily in our third trimester. Having had a baby shower last weekend really made things sink in: a baby is coming soon and forever. 

 

Doons and I at our baby shower in the mountains

Our crib that landon refinished and assembled this week. I found this crib at a garage sale in my hometown 5 years ago and just loved it. It has been in my grandmothers attic waiting for a day when we could use it. I know that is weird.i don't have anything else like that. We have purchased several other things for Little Baby second hand, but only recently.

Thus begins the nursery assembly. It's a tad overwhelming. Thankfully, our kid won't care much what her room looks like. This week Doons has been hard at work moving the house around to make room for Baby. We live in a very small little house.

This morning we woke to snow in the Salt Lake valley and the mountains have been receiving the powder for a few days now. When I got off of work we headed straight for the mountains and enjoyed an evening hike into the forest where the snow was dumping like crazy. It was so beautiful and special. Landon and I celebrate the first snow every year with a little skiing. Although this year I snow-shoed for the sake of our baby. I didn't want to chance any falling. Took me awhile to find a jacket that could zip over my bump, but I managed.

The anatomy and physiology of AT

This month's Ski Magazine had an article entitled, "The AT Boom" by Joe Cutts.

I realized that perhaps many of you have never heard of AT (or Alpine Touring) skiing.

I thought to educate you. 

Quickly, hereis the anatomy of an AT setup:

Bindings:

now, AT bindings are different than regular alpine bindings and telemark bindings. The AT bindings are a mixture of the two, actually. Your boot stays clicked in at all times (unlike the Telemark binding, where the heal raises with each step and only the toe is in the binding). It is an awesome way to travel on the mountain because when you want to hike, you just unclick the BINDING from the ski (the boot stays in completely) and you can lift your heel and hike and when you're ready to charge down, you just click the binding back onto the ski and you're stuck in and can charge really hard with great control.

 Boots:

There are a few really key features on an AT boot. One, is obviously its compatibility with the AT binding, but it also has the ability to rotate forward in the walking mode. This makes hiking up mountains much easier, when the boot can pivot with you. Then you are able to synch it up nice and tight and stable for your ride down the mountain - nothing flimsy. 

Skis:

if you're going to bother hiking in the back country then you might as well have a ski that can ride through powder. Something fat. These would be my personal choice. Keep the skinnies on the resort for cutting in the crud.

Skins:

The yellow piece is called a "skin". Skins secure to the front and back of your skis (you measure them to fit exactly) and they are super duper sticky on the bottom. These enable your skis to move forward but not backward because it has a gazillion tiny little fibers pointing backward. They are amazing. You hike with them on and then take them off on your way down.

Doons and I usually venture into the untouched land once a week. So if I tell you that we had a blast skiing, don't always picture us tearing up the groomers at the resort - we are only there half of the time. AT skiing is SO FUN and is not for the faint of heart. We will hike for hours for one nice long run down the mountain in fresh-untracked snow. I'm still learning to navigate through the trees (and have the bruises to prove it) and unfortunately I'm not much of a powder whore yet. This is the best way to get to parts of the mountain where no one has skied. It's so fun and beautiful to be alone in the wild snow country. Of course, we bring water (eating snow just doesn't do it for me) and you have to be very careful to check avalanche conditions and travel carefully if you're skiing outside of the resorts. 

As always, we are very careful. But we mostly have a lot of fun. And when we're in the backcountry, Duvick gets to ski with us. He LOVES to ski - he has such long legs and a strong chest, he's the best snow dog ever. 

Sheely 3rd Annual Colorado Hut Trip

For the last few years, we have planned a family hut trip when we come to town for Christmas in CO. Wow, it is always so beautiful and a lot of fun.

Doons and Nell worked hard on this awesome video to capture our trip.

Freshies at the Bird

Finally some more snow out here and Doons and I were on the slopes first-thing in the morning. There is a saying that goes, "there are no friends on powder days". This is incredibly funny and true. One thing that I really enjoy about skiing is the camaraderie among everyone on the mountain - we are all loving the snow and the view and having a fun time together - people are pretty friendly and cool (even the teenage snowboarder boys!). However, on a powder day, everyone is in competition to get to untracked snow. I lost one or both of my skis (during a fall) FIVE times today and only once did someone stop their run to help me locate my ski. I even had people skiing around me and spraying me with snow while I struggled to dig my ski out of the snow or put it on (which is really hard to do in deep powder on steep chutes!). Even on the drive to the parking lot everyone wanted to be first. It's a pretty pathetic but slightly hysterical reality. By noon we were all friends again - all the snow had been tracked through and everyone was just out for fun, not for freshies.

My husband is an amazing skier. Maybe one day I will be good enough at skiing that I will be able to keep up with him and video tape him at the same time. So far, I am very far from this, so you get to enjoy self-taped video. He tried a new technique this morning, so I think it's more fun to watch than the helmet cam recordings. Take a look:

Here is some video of me in the powder. Gosh, I'm pretty embarrassed to share this. I'm still learning, as you can see. But I'm MUCH better than I was at this time last year.

We both returned home dead-dog tired. My "neckie" was essential today in the wind and snow. Let me know if you want one - I have tons of material and would love to make one for you too!

What a beautiful day!

Coffee and Snowflakes

I carried my special insulated "ccci" coffee mug in one hand, with Duvick's leash and poop bag in the other. Of course, the dog was pulling me around like a rag doll forcing huge, slippery steps in the snow. My shoulders have been hurting like crazy from a little confrontation I had with a few trees while skiing on Thanksgiving day. Duvick's pull was killing the shoulders and no matter how stern or sad I made my voice sound while trying to give him a clue, he just wouldn't let up. He's not as smart as I sometimes think he is - or maybe he lacks the compassion I always grant him. Either way, there was no understanding between me and the pup except for yanking from both directions of the leash.

Duvick loves the snow - not sure why he looks cross-eyed in this picture.

There were no coffee beans in the house this morning. And when I thought to hop in the car to purchase a lb. of coffee, I saw the sky dumping huge clumps of snow. I knew Mr. McBrayer wouldn't have been happy if I took the car out - the driveway is a lot more difficult to shovel once it has heavy tracks on it. Not to mention, the thought of driving out of my neighborhood on a snowy Sunday morning in Utah made me a little nervous.

So I put on my favorite winter woolens, insulated hoodie jacket and knee-high-rubber-bottom snow boots and set out on my own two feet into the snowy morning with Duvick to get of my favorite morning friend.

It was a beautiful walk. The 5 inches of continuously building snow was slippery in spots, but otherwise easy to travel on. I love the silent stillness of snow filled skies. It's amazing how the snow insulates the sound making the "crunch" of my boots and the "jingle" of Duvick's collar amplified - it's all I hear as we walk, save for a snow-blower at the neighbor's house in the distance.

As I walk, I have time to think about things. A lot is going on in our lives. We have so much to be thankful for. Every day I thank God for giving us the opportunity to live in Utah. I dread leaving one day.

Our local coffee shop is probably a little less than half a mile from our house. It's close. It's a walk-up joint, like Good Times. You should have seen the surprise in their faces when I tapped on their walk-up window. I didn't see any footprints in the snow there - I think I was their first on-foot customer of the day. They filled my mug to the brim with French Roast, gave Duvick a doggy biscuit and told me to "stay warm out there, sweetie". I did notice some frozen chunks of snow in my hair, but besides that, I don't think I looked too cold. In fact, when it is snowing and the air is still, it's usually pretty warm out (30ish degrees), and it was. I was a little too warm by the time I got home - my glasses were even getting foggy.

What an amazing start to a wonderful day of continuous snow (it's now been snowing for 12 hours without letting up - yay!). I'm not scheduled to work at the Aviary until Tuesday. Tomorrow is my buy groceries, and work for ACSl day, but I'm not sure my to-do list can keep me off of the slopes on a fresh day.

I hope you enjoyed your extended weekend. The husband and I definitely did!

Snow-woah woah woah

Woah baby. 

SNOW

We woke this morning to "heaps" of snow (as my sis LeeAnn would say).

Did you see my post yesterday (i NEVER post on Sundays) - it was noteworthy.

And amazingly, Mr. McBrayer and I weren't shredding down the mountain. Nope. We didn't want to put up with the high winds and masses of people on the two open lifts at Snowbird. Instead, we liberated Duvick and cross country skied a few miles up the canyon.

And it was glorious:

Doons blazing the trail into the trees. East Fork, Millcreek Canyon

Winds and snow-dumpage. We were definitely experiencing the elements.

Doons tolerating my picture taking. 

Duvick in the distance. 

He was in heaven. 

I forgot my hat. By the time i got back to the car, my hair was literally frozen in little dreadlock-icicles all over my head. oops

And it's only November! I'm looking forward to a long winter full of beautiful days like today!

Back on the slopes - Snowbird

Wow, what a weekend!

Saturday was opening day at Snowbird and it felt like Christmas.

Friday night, I had a hard time falling asleep with the anticipation of the next morning - our first day of skiing since April! I nodded off to the sound of Santa Clause perfecting the wax on our skis in the dungeon. 

We slept in Saturday morning and got to the resort in the late morning. We had no desire to stand in line with all the other crazies. After all, since it is early season, there are only two lifts open. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to ski an entire day yet - my legs could only handle about 4 hours.

We parked our car, crammed our toesies into our boots (i hadn't remembered them being that uncomfortable), and carried our shiney-waxed skis to the lift line. We threw our skis on the snow and clicked into the bindings. At the feeling of finally being on skis again, Doons and I looked at each other with huge smiles. Mmmmm, what a great feeling. We were happy.

It was a beautiful day on the mountain and the snow was surprisingly awesome. Not too crowded on the slopes, although we had to wait in line for a few minutes to get on the lifts (very normal but never had to do that at Snowbasin - ever). I was amazed at how easy it was to get back into my old groove. I'm pretty good at keeping up with the husband (or so he lets me believe, which is probably more likely).

Wow. So much fun! 67 inches of snow in the last 3 weeks, and we're lovin' it!

First Snow

You should have seen the three of us yesterday.

As we drove up Mill Creek Canyon, our excitement was impossible to contain as we saw the snow get deeper and deeper as we climbed in altitude. 

Landon and I were giddy as we clicked our toes into our cross country skies and headed into the woods. Duvick was running and pouncing through the snow; if he could talk, i think he would have been singing. We're just a snow family, is all.

 

Can you just see how beautiful our first snow is? I love it!

 Every year, our first snow in the Rockies is spectacular. As the sun breaks through the clouds, the world is not only twinkling with the snow, but in places it is golden as the leaves are glistening-wet and  reflecting the light. It's incredible to experience the snow with the fall foliage. I LOVE IT!

Although, you can see it's hard on the trees to bear so much weight as the snow clings to the leaves.

We are so fortunate to have a ski-able snow so early in the year!

Celebrating Easter

Yesterday I woke before the sunrise and was able to watch the sun creep over the Wasatch Mountains on my drive to church. Blue skies, slow-covered peaks, and absolutely no one on the roads made for a very peaceful morning.

Easter is my most favorite holiday! I think it is the most significant of all.

I was lucky enough to sing in my church choir on Easter morning, which was a lot of fun. There were five of us total, which I think is hilarious, but we had fun nonetheless. The sermon at my church was about the freedom that we have in salvation. Which I thought was an interesting take on an Easter sermon. I liked it. 

After church, Landon and I packed up our ski gear and headed down to the Cottonwood canyons beside Salt Lake City. Landon and Kevin had been on some beautiful little adventures in these canyons last weekend, and Landon wanted me to see them first hand. 

putting my skins on the bottom of my skis

skinning up the mountain

We slipped our skins on our skis and headed into the back country. The snow was deep and fresh. And because we started our ski trip late in the day, it was actually so soft that it was sticking to the bottom of our skis and making the treck with heavy skis and boots uphill even more of a challenge because we were dragging snow beneath us. 

doons skinning up the mountain

we came to a beautiful valley and we took our skis off to scrape the snow off of the skins

But the woods were beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, which made our time worth every effort. 

Landon wanted to skin all the way up this ridge so that we could have an epic ride downhill. But after a little over a mile into the mountains I was sore from the two previous powder days we've had at Snowbasin and Landon thought that we should turn around once he noticed I was seriously dragging. Ha. It's funny to me, he has been teaching me all these outdoor activities and wants so desperately for me to continue to love them so he really is sensitive to how I am enjoying my time while we're out. He imagined a world where I bring up this Easter day where our skins wouldn't glide and my legs hurt and I fell the whole way down the mountain and therefore was never planning on hitting the backcountry with him ever again. And in order to avoid this possible world, he suggested that we tear our skins off and head back down. Which we did. 

It was fun soaring through the Aspen groves. I actually fell more on our hike in than our ride out. And I smiled the entire time. 

Landon says that backcountry skiing is our new family Easter tradition. What is more appropriate in remembering our salvation in Christ than to be in the snow all day - "he washed us white as snow"?

Ski Weekend with Kim

We had a good friend join us for some skiing this last weekend all the way from KENYA!

Kim and Landon have been friends these last 8 years, since his summer in Kenya. I was able to get to know her as we got to experience life together during our year out there with Brackenhurst Ministries.

We had so much fun catching up!

I have never been able to ski with another woman before. I loved skiing with Kim. She really challenged me to do the things that I've never done and always shy away from (as you can see in the picture below).

It was a beautiful 3 days on the mountain!

It was wonderful to be with Kim again. I hope it isn't another 4 years until we see her again!

Another ski weekend

We have been so blessed lately to have family here to visit. Pooks came President's Day weekend and then my dad came this last weekend for a ski trip. Unfortunately we didn't get any fresh snow for his trip, but the snow still wasn't bad at all.

Landon's learning to use his helmet cam ever better, so I'll post some videos of dad's ski trip to Utah:

This is my dad. He's amazing.


This is me. I'm still learning.

It's wonderful to have family here to visit and to ski.

This is an open invite to anyone else that would like to come out here for a ski trip! We are 30 mins from the nearest ski resort and lift tickets are $57.00/day. Pretty cheap. I'll cook for you and you can stay at our place. All you need to buy are the lift tickets and your plane ticket. That's a sweet deal for a one-time chance to experience "the greatest snow on earth". Get your booties out here!

Ski weekend with Pooks

We have had an amazing President's Day weekend! Pooks (Landon's cousin-brother) came to visit us this weekend to enjoy some amazing Utah powder! Sadly, his home in North Carolina had more snow than our house did this weekend, ha! But the mountain was awesome. Two days of powder and one blue-bird day made for some very wonderful skiing.

If you care, check out the videos:

Pooks on some black groomers. This is actually the run that was the womens downhill race in the 2002 Olympics here in Utah. You can see that we were socked inside of a snow cloud for much of the day, so the visibility is sketchy. But this gives you a good idea of what a day is like when Pooks and Doons get together. Not too easy to tell, but they are going pretty dang fast.


Pooks and Doons were in constant search of untouched powder through the trees. The next 3 videos are through some nice powder that Preston chose for the video venue.


Landon making some beautiful tele-turns in the "pow"...followed by me falling.


And we even got a video of me. I was reading through our skiing magazine about how to ski through powder. One of the things it says is that you are supposed to have a stance like a boxer, not like you are sitting on the toilet. I definitely look like i have the toilet stance in this video.


Landon just left to take Pooks to the airport and I'm sitting down to get into my work week. It was AMAZING to have Preston here at our house. We don't get to see him too often and we love him dearly. Sad to see him go, but we definitely had a blast this weekend!

Hut Trip to Ken's Cabin

Our Hut Trip this year was awesome. Last year it was just Landon, Dad and I and we went to the 10th Mountain Hut. This year, Nell came along and we were able to go to a 3 person cabin, so we got the whole thing to ourselves!! (last year we shared the cabin with 3 other groups - one with young kids, and one, a group of teenagers - not much sleep on either end!)

We drove to the trail head just 30 minutes away from my parents' cabin. It was awesome, the convenience of this place. The hut is usually accessed by the opposite side of the mountain (the Breckenridge side), so we had the 5 mile trail COMPLETELY to ourselves all the way in and all the way out. That was awesome.

the family. Nell's first backpacking trip and her first hut trip!

There was a fairly long (1-2 miles?) of flat trail that meandered through the woods. It was pretty beautiful. On our way out, Landon and I saw lots and lots of animal prints on this trail. It's pretty neat to use a trail that the forest creatures have been using.

crossing the creek

stopping half way for lunch and blister control

Landon got this picture of Dad making his way to the cabin after a mile of gradual up hill. The building in the distance belongs to the forest service.

A picture of Ken's cabin the next morning before our hike out. Pretty cute, huh?

This is just a one room cabin with a sink (no plumbing), an iron stove and 2 beds, and a table. It was very cozy. Landon and Dad woke up periodically throughout the night to stoke the stove. We were pretty warm in there! This cabin was built in 1860-something (i think) by the 10th mountain division of the military. I couldn't believe that we were staying in a cabin that existed before Colorado even received its statehood. Pretty awesome. And not too drafty!

These are pictures Landon took of the water-making process. We go outside with our avalanche shovel (and me with my down booties) and shovel snow into the snow-only trash can until it is at the top.

then shovel the snow into the buckets that are resting on top of the blazing stove. Snow melts into water, then we use the water for cooking (we cook AWESOME meals on hut trips because they have burners and pans in the cabins. We had eggs benedict for breakfast, and chicken marsala with sauteed vegetables and wine for dinner), dishes, and we filter it into our bottles for drinking and pack it for our hike out.

Then we skied out. Landon and I took the same trail back because it was partly downhill and he was in a telemark outfit and i was using my Alpine Touring gear. Dad and Nell were on cross country skies so they took the dirt road back down, which was 3 miles longer, snow packed,  and closed to traffic during the winter. Hills are much trickier on cross country skies. Landon and I, however, had a blast on the downhill!