Mile High to the End of the Road: Playing in the Snow

With all the excitement of the holidays, it has once again been forever since I've updated this thing. We had an absolutely marvelous Christmas in Colorado with our wonderful family and friends. We were blessed to have an engagement party thrown for us the Saturday before Christmas which allowed us to see everyone who was around the Longmont area and spent the remainder of the week spending time with family and getting some wedding planning items checked off. Because everything was so hectic, I hardly took any pictures at all. Of the few I did take, I have to share these adorable ones of Grant and nephews John and Colin on the buoy swing we gave them for Christmas:

Pure Christmas Joy

Buoy swings are all the rage for Alaskan kids so we figured they should probably have one as well. Let us know if anyone else wants one for their littles or themselves. From an adult perspective, they are much more comfortable on the cheeks than a tire swing and way more exotic than a tire on the plains of Colorado.

While I won't complain about lack of sleep because we wanted to spend every minute possible having fun, after sleeping an average of 5 hours or less per night in CO (darn that early 7am sunrise), our bodies were ready to return north to return to hibernation mode. Lucky for us, Homer had a lovely 3+ feet of snow delivered on Christmas Eve so the terrain was a bit different than when we left.

Since then, it has alternated between snow and rain. There is a terrible phenomenon which we as former Coloradans have never experienced: freezing rain. A nice 6-7" of snow will fall only to be covered in rain, slush, and ice the following day. Nothing drives a dagger in a skier's heart quite like rain on top of snow. It also makes the driving conditions quite exciting. Luckily, we have only slid off the road once and lucky for us, it happened at a speed of 3 mph and was 1/4 mile from our friends' house who just happened to have a giant truck with chains to pull us out.

One morning, we woke up to an unexpected 15" overnight. Grant kindly dug the truck out and we followed one set of tracks down the unplowed road to work. The snow was still falling heavily and if we had waited another hour to leave, it may have even kept Big White at home. Grant waited in town for a couple hours after dropping me off thinking he would give the snow plow some time to clear the road. After a couple hours he gave up and decided to give it a try anyway. He finally made it home after digging out no less than 4 times along the way. Little did he know that a snowplow wouldn't be around until after 3pm that day (on a fairly major road). Big White somehow managed to slide a bit off the driveway and got stuck in the driveway again. Grant valiantly tried digging the truck out again to rescue me from a working day that included a whopping 3 patients but just couldn't do it. Jackie kindly dropped me off on the main road and Grant met me to traipse down our road to home. The next day we went to digging out again and with the help of our Christmas tree, freed Big White from the white hole.

In between digging out and sliding, we have had a wonderful time actually enjoying winter. We've even caved to the local suggestions and groomed trails and got ourselves some skate skis. Pics of that to come once we've figured out what we are doing.