Spring is here

So late time I left you Mom was coming for a visit. We had a wonderful visit. I had the four days off that she was here and we got to spend lots of good quality time together. We had lunch, we "antiqued" and both found some cool stuff, we went on a scenic drive on a day that it wasn't quite clear enough to see the "scenic part"! (oh well) and we had dinner ever night with Erik. So I didn't take many pictures because Mom took lots. I had her send them to me but I'm having just a little trouble opening them (don't worry Mom I'll figure it out.) So I'll show you those pictures later.

Other things we've done this spring is we started hiking again! This post shows that start of our hikes last year. I love it, mostly because I love all the pretty flowers in the Spring. Our spring has been much like the Midwest and been unseasonably cool. Today is our first day of 60's in a row. We hit 60 and 70 before but it was always for one day then it's be back in the 40's. Anyway, back to hiking. There is still a lot of snowpack in the mountains so we stuck around town and hit some of the more popular places that have had good snow melt. "In town" we get much less snow than at elevation and it melts quicker and it's much drier.

We went to Blue Mountain a few weeks ago. You'll remember our hike there from this post

Here we are in the parking lot, very excited because it was a 70 degree day!

Here's one of the views on the hike: The pic just doesn't capture the mountains very well!

See we hiked through a little snow! Hey, what's that in Erik's hand?! No look at the hand in the back , the one he's trying to hide.....

Hey, here's that cute couple who keeps popping up on the blog all the time. And aren't they also wearing some of the same clothes they always wear. (Yep, you caught us again in our hiking clothes and my red MN Wild hat!) In the background is a little of Missoula and the surrounding mountains.

Then a week after that we went on a hike in the Rattlesnake. That's really close to where we live. It's a great place to hike and Erik LOVES to mountain bike there. It's a bit too challenging for me to bike.

Here I am. The area behind me used to be an old ranch. You could still see bits of the foundation in some areas. Now it houses a HUGE colony of prairie dogs, you could see them running and squeeking their allert signals. Sorry they were too quick for me to get a pic of.

Erik's always in front of me.....

It was an overcast day. It even sprinkled some snow on us. Here's the best "vista" shot I could get.Well that's one update. More too come!

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!

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!