1st visit

My Mom's coming today! We're picking her up tonight in Whitefish at the train depot! I'm so excited. I'll have some pics and stories to share later this week!
Yippee!

One Year!? Really?

Has it really been one year already? Yep, we've officially been out in Montana for one year. Sometimes it seems longer, sometimes it seems shorter. If you want a reminder check it out here.
Some things we like about living in Missoula, MT
1. Really close to the outdoors! If you have any questions baout that just click on any of the catergories labeled: skiing, hiking, camping etc and you'll understand. :-)
2. Small city , but big enough. Everything we need here: thai food, REI, library, University, etc. Only thing Erik missed is Menards but since we don't own our home yet he doesn't miss it too much.
3. Our church. We found a good one and we're getting to know some people there so it's good.
4. New friends. We've got a few. (see things we miss below)
5. Good public transportation. We are right on the bus line and both of us can bus to work almost every day (I can't on the weekends I work) We can also both bike to work when the weather is cooperating.

Some things we miss about Minnesota
1. Our Friends and Family!!!! 'nuf said.
2. Don't really miss the humidity but we do miss rain and lakes. There's not much of either of those out here. All the lakes you see in the blog are because we seek them out, sort of like those water finding sticks.
3. Friends.
4. The crazy commute to work every day.....NOT!!
5. Our old church, North Heights was a really good church and we miss some of the great resources it had.
6. Family.

Well that's about it. We did go skiing last weekend at Discovery Ski area. It was really fun. I tried the whole downhill thing again and did ok. We forgot the camera again, but I'm not sure we would have taken it out skiing with us anyway but we could have at least taken a shot by the lodge or something.
So until next time. Look for more pics and stories when hiking season starts up again in April.

More skiing but not much else!

So, I'm sorry!!! I totally didn't realize that I haven't posted for soooo loooong. Oops! It's mostly because there's not much exciting going on around here. We did take another trip to Sandpoint Idaho. We were there last summer and met some really nice people, Mark and Lorrie. Check it out here. So we got in touch with them and were able to ski all day on Feb 16th with them. We had a really good time and even went out to dinner with them that night. It's so nice to meet such great people and new friends! Here's the only picture we took of us skiing. We're at an overlook that if it wasn't so cloudy you could have seen down to the lake (you can just see a tiny bit of it on the right side) and all the surrounding mountains. (see the pics from last summer and you'll get and idea)

Oh, here's a picture of Erik in the parking lot next to the wall of snow! They have gotten record amounts of snow this year. Over 95 inches in Sandpoint and over 120 inches in Coure de' Alane!And one last funny picture, this is Erik in his cool headband. He got it at the Birkebiener in like 1989 of something like that. He thinks it looks cool still, I say totally 80's! I must find it and get rid of it! I'll have to buy him a new one!This last weekend I hung out with some girlfriends and played Buncho for the first time. PRetty fun and easy game to play. I feel a little older now, I've always thought of Bunco as the game your parents play! Well, I'm not a parent but hopefully I'm on the way! Saturday we skiied in Seely Lake about 1 hour drive northeast of Missoula. It was pretty warm and the snow was really slow but it was pretty fun. I had one melt down, cuz I'm not very good and it's really frustrating sometimes to always be catching up and I can't balance and I'm just not good at anything...... Oh,, there I go again! Erik was really encouraging and reminded me that he's been skiing for 20 years (man, he's old! ;-)) and that he has really bad technique for about 10 years. He told me I just needed to be patient and work on it, that it would come eventually. So I went out again and felt a little better about how bad I ski! ;-)

We don't do much else but read books, watch movies, I knit and make crafty stuff and clean the house but you don't want to hear about that! So when hiking season hits I'm sure these posts will become more interesting again!

Oh, we do have some small news to share. I am taking a day position on my same unit, Medical/Oncology (cancer). It's four 8-hr days a week, every other weekend and they still cover my heath insurance 100%. I'm excited about it, a little nervous too but it will be much better for the home life. I'm just exhausted almost all the time and half the week Erik and I don't even get to see each other. The new postition starts in April.

If you have time to drop us a line of give us a call we'd appreciate it!