Mid Winter update

Boy, this winter is lingering on and on!! WE were starting to warm up here in Missoula. Spring was on the way and Old Man Winter shook his head and yelled, "No Way!" It's cold with snow flurries the last couple days. I don't think it would be that bad but for the fact that it had really warmed up here for a few days so it lures you into thinking it's going to stay that way! Uggggh! Well, at least we can continue skiing! ;-) We've been to visit to friends and ski with them in Feb. One is west in Sandpoint, ID and on is east in Bozeman, MT. We had great times of skiing and fellowship with our friends. Heres a few pics:

This is Picnic Point on the x-ctry ski trails at Schweitzer near Sandpoint, ID.












Here we are at Bohart Ranch x-ctry ski trails, Bridger Bowl downhill ski area is in the background. Gorgeous, huh? This is outside Bozeman, MT.









Laughing about something on the ski trails.













Erik pulled our friend' Jennifer's daughter, Eva in the sled. He did great, only dumped her once, HA! Jenifer is in the rear of the picture. We had turned Eva around so that she could talk to her mom.
Well, That's all for now! Until next time!

Recent photos, Christmas and more

Hello all!
Well, we've been having a good winter so far. We were able to make it "home for the holidays" back to good ol' MN and we saw lotsof our friends and family while we were there. We have finally begun to x-ctry ski out here. We have yet to make it downhill skiing. Not that it's far away, cuz it's not. But it's soooooo much cheaper to x-ctry ski! Like free in many areas out here! Anyhoo we're still just waiting to hear that we've been picked for an adoption. God is good while we're waiting! Your prayers are welcome though! Here's a few pics from the last couple months:
Me, Mom and Tara:














Me and Erik:














Here we are digging out our car at the Spokane Airport: (It was a couple feet of snow!):













Now it's 2009 and here's me skiing:



















Erik and me:














Well, Happy 2009! Drop us a line and tell us how you're doing!

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!

A ski, a bruise, but lots of fun!

So I mentioned in the last post that we were going down hill skiing with Erik's work. I have only skiied once in my life in MN, on ice when it was -14 windchil with a 30 min. lesson. So needless to say, didn't much like it and didn't really get the hang of it at all. If we had stayed in MN I would have been very content to never downhill ski again, but since we moved out here I thought I could maybe give it a try again. Now at first I wasn't going to even with Erik encouraging me, but when I heard three other adults were going to take a lesson and I am friends with one of them, that changed my mind. I figured I could take the lesson and then sit in the lodge and knit the rest of the afternoon! The bummer of the whole day was I forgot the camera at home so I don't have any pictures to share with you!! Sorry! Here's a link to the website where we skiied: http://www.silvermt.com/
Erik had a really good time getting his ski legs back, he was out all day with only a short break for lunch. I'm glad he got to down hill again! My lesson was great! It was an hour and a half with the instructor helping us the whole time. I mostly got the hang of it, not that I can do it perfectly yet but I can at least do it. I only fell once, of course I was standing still and fell over, ugh, embarrassing! Oh, and I had a litle trouble with the chairlifts! I did fine the first couple times and then everything went downhill from there. One time I was waiting for the chair lift to push me away, like they said it would but silly me, I forgot to stand up! So all the sudden my skis are lifting back off the ground and I immediately fling my self off and got smacked by the chairlift in the rear! The poor lift operator stopped the lift immediately and was standing over me before I even lifted up my head with the big scared eyes. I just said, "I'm so sorry, I'm ok and it's my first day!" So I was a little shaken and had a HUGE bruise but OK and I went on to ski again. (I'd show a picture cuz, it's really cool and really black/blue/purple, but it's not in the prettiest place!)
Overall, it was an excellent day and I only knitted for about 30 minutes in the lodge. Can't wait to go again and keep working on the muscle memory. Hoping that I'll get it enough the when we have kids I can go and not just be the "lodge mother".
How are you all doing? We'd love to hear from you!

X-country skiing in West Yellowstone

West Yellowstone is the town situated on the West entrance ot the park. Population 912 year round and 1500 during tourist season. Elevation 6670ft. (Missoula is 3200ft, St. Paul 702ft) Average snowfall 150 inches at year! It's real close to Big Sky, probably on of the most popular Montana ski resorts for out-of-staters. http://www.bigskyresort.com/ West Yellowstone also has some of the best cross country skiing trails in the west. http://www.rendezvousskitrails.com/ That is where we wanted to go this past weekend. So we went.

We were able to stop and visit a friend and her newly adopted daughter in Bozeman. They recently moved from MN so it was fun to see both of them. We look forward to seeing them more for hiking and skiing adventures. We made it to W. Yellowstone about 10pm on Friday.

Saturday morning we got ready to ski most the day. The trails had been groomed in the wee hours of the morning but it was snowing a little and the wind was whipping the snow around so there was an inch or so covering all the trails but they were still in good skiing condition. However, because of the altitude,(see above) we were literally sucking wind! We picked the Deja View loop 7.3km and read AFTER we finished that it had the two longest climbs of the whole trail system. UGH! But the down hils were FUN!! ;-) Then we came in and had some lunch in the warming hut. After lunch we went back out and went on the Rendezvous loop (6 km) but I turned at the Grizzly cutoff and Erik did the whole thing. I just knew I needed to save a little for skiing the next day!

Here we are in front of the warming hut:

Erik skiing up a hill, this is the second time while I was catching my breath:Here I am by a trail map/sign:My skis :-), I was waiting for Erik after taking that short cut:Sat nite into Sunday it snowed probably 8-10 inches! We did ski on Sunday also but there was even more snow on the trail and we got a really good workout! Then we drove home. The roads were ok, but we had to be careful in a few spots but we made it just fine.

Well, I have to work the rest of the week so I won't be back on here until sometime next week! You all take care!