Our little artist....

(If you look closely you can see her drawings on the tile, both walls, and herself.)

In a matter of a few minutes the other day, Maren was able to create quite the masterpiece in our home. Unfortunately she chose to use a variety of canvases for her work. I sent her downstairs to have Jim put a new diaper on her as I was currently busy organizing clothes in the girls room. She returns about 5 minutes later still diaperless and covered in red! I was not very happy and started hollering and before it was all through the entire family was implicated as having played a part in the ordeal. Maren had started in the kitchen with the marker and had colored on the carpet, clothing, shoes, walls, tile, doors, etc. between there and the bedroom I was working in. She was in trouble for her masterpieces, Jim for his inattention to her allowing her to sneak a marker out of the box sitting next to the laptop he was on, Whitney for leaving the markers out, and me for allowing Whitney to use the markers while Maren was napping. Luckily it was a washable marker and came off most stuff quite easily and most of the walls hit I painted with Scotchguard paint last fall so it wiped right off. It's quite comical to think about now and that I totally over-reacted. Maybe its a good time to pull out that blame it on pregnancy card!

Welcome home surprise!

My wonderful husband has outdone himself this year. He took me for a week long ski vacation to Lake Tahoe and brought me a card and chocolate for Valentines day. When I returned home a few days following he surprised me and the girls with a vase of fresh tulips and a NEW CAR! We had started to shop for a larger vehicle due to the impending arrival of baby #3 but were still planning on waiting another month or so before purchasing anything. Since the insurance decided to total the Altima shortly after I left our need for new vehicle was enhanced. He decided to purchase a Toyota Sequoia that we had looked at and liked, after negotiating for a better price than what they initially offered. It was quite a surprise and also a relief to not have to deal with car shopping upon my return!

We love the mountains...

We just returned from an 2.5 week vacation out west. The trip started with the girls and I flying to OR. It takes an entire day to make it across the country but the girls were great little travelers. We spent the first week hanging out at my parents house and enjoyed spending time with them along with 3 of my 5 brothers and their families and my grandparents. There were 9 of the 10 cousins there (all 5 or under) so the girls had a blast with so many friends to play with. They loved playing at the indoor water park and going to the playground with their cousins. On our way home from the water park Dad took a corner a little fast and the two year olds piped up with some backseat driving commentary "Papa, car fast". It was pretty funny to hear what they had to say about it. I was also floored because it was the first time Maren spoke putting two ideas together.

The highlight of every night was going in the hot tub with Papa-san.

At the end of the week I left the girls there and headed to CA to visit a friend for two days where we enjoyed a morning without kids going to the gym, having lunch, and getting pampered with the ultimate pedicures. After that I headed onto Reno/Lake Tahoe tomeet up with Jim. The girls had a blast being spoiled rotten while I was gone. They had the undivided attention of two sets of grandparents for a few days and got to go on adventures to Chuck E. Cheese, the water park, and a few others. Jim had a conference at a nice hotel at the base of Squaw Valley near Lake Tahoe for a week. The conference was scheduled for the mornings and evenings leaving the day free to enjoy the slopes. We lucked out and had a minimum of 6 inches of fresh snow everyday. It was great to be able to do some fun "steep and deep" powder skiing and enjoy some time without kids.

(Not the best pic, but we wanted to get one to show our son that we taught him to be a good skier in utero!)

I took two of the five days off from skiing and enjoyed some time relaxing, snowshoeing and playing some hard core disc golf (see previous post).

While in the area Jim also did some preliminary job interviews with the local groups as that is one of the areas we're looking at moving to in the next few years. We also spent some time looking at housing and checking out the local area. I headed back to OR across some snowy roads in time to repack suitcases and head out early the next day to fly home. I think one of the things we realized from this trip is how much we miss being close to the mountains.

Hard core disc golfing...

One of our newest recreational adventures has been to take up playing disc golf. Being on vacation was no exception! Jim packed some of the discs so we could check out the local courses. We played one day down in Reno where the only obstacles were sage brush but there were huge elevation changes on the holes. It's quite fun to huck a disc off the top of a big hill out into the open sky and see how far it will fly. One afternoon we decided to check out the course in Truckee near the ski resort. It was quite snowy but added a new dimension to the game. Unfortunately we were unable to locate a few of the holes due to the snow. We still had a great time playing and didn't lose a single disc!

For my Dad and brothers...

None of this heavy Spokane or Oregon snow for us to ski in.....

...and that wasn't even the day it was almost waist deep!

POWDER DAY!

(shot from end of day with Lake Tahoe in background)

As we've been reading the snow reports for Squaw Valley the last week or so it was not much to look forward to especially considering it got real warm last week which translates to icy conditions on the slopes. However this morning when we woke up for our first day of skiing, we were ecstatic to find 18 inches of fresh powder on the ground with a few more inches that accumulated throughout the morning. It made for an awesome day of steep and deep skiing with an abundance of face shots. It was heaven for us ski junkies! My resolve to take it easy and stay on the blue groomers quickly went out the window (though there weren't many groomers with all the new snow and then they are more dangerous as that's where all the beginners are congregated). On one of our lift rides the chair stopped for a minute and right at that time we watched this guy do a back flip off the 50 foot cliff that was directly in front of us. It was quite amazing to witness, better than many of the tricks you see on the Warren Miller films. My quads are dead from skiing through the knee to thigh deep powder all day. Good thing we have some other obligations tomorrow so we can take a day to rest!

Goodbye, dear Altima...

We got rear ended a few weeks back causing some damage to the left rear corner of the Altima. We had taken the car into the body shop this week for the repair work to be done. They had initially estimated the repairs to be fairly minimal but upon removing the damaged bumper they found more damage to multiple body panels pushing the repair cost above the value of the vehicle so the insurance totaled it. It was somewhat sad to be losing our beloved Altima that has carried us on trips from the southern US border across the northern border, from west coast to east coast and many adventures in between over the last few years. Many good memories were made with that car carrying us on our way. We had planned to get rid of the green beater when we purchased a bigger vehicle in the next few months but we'll have to hold onto it. I guess it's time to get a little more serious about buying that new car! Goodbye, dear Altima!