Little Farmers

The best kind of Sneetch on the beaches

Christmas at home: laughing. cuddles. shared toothbrushes. coffee. warm fireplaces. sledding. friends. sparkling beverages. fresh eggs. farm animals. wind. muck boots. new toys. early mornings. chatter. warm cookies. silver spoons. phone calls. evergreens. late nights. green tea. snowy hikes. p90x. storybooks. stinky ski boots. down sweaters. baking. cooking. washing dishes. fuzzy slippers. wrapping paper. mail. laundry. updates. Legos. job-site tours. rabbit walks. Samson and Delilah. wet socks. red wine. hot chocolate. no haircuts.

A six year storm

On Wednesday we were skiing through ankle-deep powder. On Friday we were skiing through knee-deep powder. On Saturday it started raining and we were skiing through thigh-deep sloppy wet junk.

Getting out of the car took some serious motivation. It's always a bit disconcerting to head out on skis when it's pouring rain outside.

A little more snow and a little less rain at the top

Christmas on our street

The fresh snow earlier this week made our street look like winter wonderland.

Tis the Season

A sequence of events

We've started our annual ski day tally. The goal is to ski more days then our competitors. As you might of guessed nobody really cares about this competition. That is, no one but Jocelyn. She cares and competes with great enthusiasm. Over the last three years we've won 2 of 3. Unfortunately, this year does not bode well for another win. Jocelyn is going to be working as full-time ski patrol and already has us beat by two days. Like a good sister, she has not hesitated to taunt us with her likely win.

This is not a contrived sequence of events, we just happened to capture two classic moments on our descent.

The winner at the top

Almost to the bottom

Some friends and a sister

My sister made the big move to South Lake this week. She stayed with us for a few days but I guess the dirty floor, 60 minute commute and crash pad combo wasn't comparable to an adorable woodsy loft within walking distance to her new job. We did manage a couple of ski days before the new work week rolled around.

Some Reno rabble-rousers also headed into the backcountry with us. Enough said.

Gearing up

Skinning to the top

The descent

A week of Thanksgiving

A long drive through desert landscapes

A four day gun camp in the desert

A visit to Death Valley

A tour of a date farm. Date shake anyone?

A muddy ride

A beautiful morning at the beach

A few epic early-season backcountry turns

Snow in the Sierras

Our rides have been getting a bit chilly but the views are so impressive. We might be biased but we think Reno is so pretty with all the colored trees in the city and the snowy sierras in the background.

Washoe boulders

It pays to know some locals. It would of taken us years to find these boulders if we were on our own. Though it appears in the following three photographs that the women-folk just observed, that is not the case. Although sometimes I feel more like sleep on our bouldering mats then actually bouldering.

Working on the house

Friday we decided we had all weekend to work on the house, so we went for a bike ride, confident that "we would work hard all day Saturday". Today, we had breakfast with some friends, and decided that we needed to burn it off with another ride. So much for Saturday. There's always Sunday, right?

The best of Summer 2010

Death Valley National Park

Denver and Carter looking down the U-notch on North Palisade

Joshua Tree National Park

Red Rocks National Park

Denver leading West Country in Tuolumne

Mono Lake

Mathes Crest

Jocelyn and Denver skiing the Mountaineer's Route, Mt Whitney

Lover's Leap

Denver approaching Bear Creek Spire

A new neighborhood

Over the weekend we moved into our new house. Goodbye dingy apartment that is dark like a bat cave. Hello old house with charming brick and tons of windows. The house is 86 years old and is therefore quite small and in need of some serious upgrades. So it's not 100% charming now, but it has lots of potential and will be 100% cool when we're done. I hope. At least the neighbors and the Frank The Mailman are all friendly so they won't make fun of us to our faces. I am excited about the project, but also wish we could move in without spending a couple of months living out of boxes. Oh well, I'll just have to pray for patience and hope that Denver works as fast as he say's he does.

My favorite parts about our new place? My very own washer and dryer. A peaceful and quiet neighborhood. The big tall trees lining the street. A room in the basement that is dedicated to the storage of gear. And bright sunshiny rooms.

The dining and living room

The kitchen and breakfast nook



The carriage house which is slated to become a studio apartment.

our house is on fire

When Chelsea and I came home from work earlier this week, we saw the channel 2 news vans in our apartment's parking lot. Last time this happend, it was becuase one of our neighbors (a friendly asian gentleman) had strangled his wife to death in a domestic dispute the night before. So naturally, we were curious to see what had happened this time. As we rounded the corner to our parking space, we saw what the fuss was all about:The building across from ours was completely burned on one end. The building across from ours burned down when we lived at the beloved J347 in Anchorage. Is it just the shady places I live, or do apartments burn down on a routine basis? Or maybe some dyslexic, sinister mastermind is intent on burning my house down, but can't get the unit number right. Just to be safe, I'm going to move into brick house next time.

Fresh socks and bumper stickers

We made a quick jaunt to Oregon over the weekend. We took a leisurely afternoon hike to Blue Lake with Denver's parents, ate piles of pancakes, drank lots of coffee and tea with my parents, gathered eggs with Kayce and Garret, successfully leased the house for another year, and planned a winter ski trip with Jocelyn. Not all weekends can be perfect however and sadly enough the duffel that we had our clothes in was somehow left sitting in the middle of our apartment floor. Meaning we spent the weekend only in the clothes we were wearing when we left Reno and whatever articles of clothing we could nab from our unsuspecting relatives. We're still a little dumfounded that we could actually step over the duffel to get out the door and still leave it behind.

Here is Denver in his father's fleece dreaming of all the freshly laundered socks he had placed in the duffel the night before.

On an unrelated topic, regarding natural childbirth, I saw a bumper sticker one time that read "Midwives help people out."