Whew! Let's get this blog started up again, shall we? There is no excuse to my absence (except that I am on Facebook too much) and I have been writing blogs in my head for months (since Luke was born!) Who knows how many stories are lost (such as camping through our first whole Alaskan summer) because of my poor time management or sheer laziness. I'd rather not lose any more, so I will try and not procrastinate. Those of you who are excited for the Snowbunny's return can thank my youngest brother, who is in Basic Training right now in Texas. He has requested letters every day and I thought he might get bored of my same encouraging words day in and day out, so he is going to get a lot of daily happenings instead =) And since I type faster than I write, I will be typing them before I send them, and then conveniently adding them to my blog =) See how that works? Lol.
(Sorry, but pictures may be lacking since they are usually on my big camera which needs to be uploaded to Heath's computer first, then the files need to be edited before they can be posted here which all takes way more time than I seem to have. Maybe one day when Luke starts sleeping through the night in his own bed...hey! A girl can dream...=)
We have been super busy around here lately, as always! The kids had a ski race last weekend at Alyeska so we decided to stay the whole weekend, from Friday till Monday. The kids raced an extremely icy, steep slope on Saturday. It was difficult and not at all ideal conditions, but all our kids tried really hard and raced their best, despite the discouraging terrain. Heath is such a great coach to the little ones. I just love watching him out there being a dad and a coach! =) Hailey and Drew did well, neither of them fell. That was a huge accomplishment, one which many of our kids can not say they had. I am sure Drew was the only 4 year old out there racing and he did really awesome for his age! Hailey's group is rather large, so she had a lot of competition. We encouraged her to focus on a goal for herself after her first run instead of a medal. She ran 49 sec on #1 and set a goal of 45 sec for her 2nd run. She beat it with a 44!! That is amazing to shave 5 secs off a run. We were so very proud of her. We (mom and dad) gave them both gold medals for their efforts. I ordered really cool ski medals so we could give them to the kids since they always work really hard at getting better =)
After the race Hailey and Heath continued skiing (Hailey really wanted to ski from the top of the mountain, which is really high!! Scares mommy, lol =) and Drew and I (and Luke =) headed back to the hotel to hang out. Of course we stopped at the cafe and got some hot chocolate and cookies. One of Drew's very favorite things is getting hot cocoa =) We had dinner at the hotel to save time since the kids were really anxious to get into the pool (which is a saltwater pool, very nice =). Everyone had pizza except me. I had pasta with winter squash and roasted garlic in a parmesan cream sauce. It was pretty good...a recipe I will have to try and duplicate, I think!
The kids were so excited to be at the pool. A lot of the families from the ski team stayed at the resort so it was like one big party at the pool. It was AWESOME! You know how I love parties ;) The kids jumped in with all their friends...it is amazing to see how much their confidence in swimming is boosted just because they are swimming with friends that can swim unassisted. Drew was kicking all around the pool himself hugging a kickboard. Hailey was swimming around with the other kids, and I sent Luke in with Heath while I chatted with some of the parents (and took pictures, of course!! Hey, it's what I do =) It didn't take Luke long to fall asleep, must have been the gentle bouncing in the water =) Then we headed back up to our room to watch the fireworks out over the mountain. Such a cool thing to get to do. We don't see too many fireworks here since it's light all summer. It was really neat to see them out over the snow. Just a great, great day!
The next day we slept in late and took our time getting moving. We had a late breakfast before everyone suited up to go skiing again. This was the 3rd day in a row we were there and EVERY day was bright and sunny!!! How awesome is that?! We have been very lucky this winter to get lots and lots of sunshine!! It certainly makes a difference in you mood! Drew was excited to ski down from the top with Hailey and daddy. He is such a big boy! It is really a cool that he has the confidence to do that! I was going to hang out in the room for a while with Luke and then ride the tram to the top later to meet them for some food. I watched them through our window head to the lift then sat in the window soaking up the sun's rays while Luke napped. It was the most blissful 15 minutes ever! (Then Luke woke up =) It is amazing when you realize all the things you take for granted after you don't have them anymore. Sitting in warm sunshine is definitely one of them for me. I never thought that I wouldn't have that somewhere.
Luke and I spent a couple hours reading and hanging out before heading out and up the tram. I really wanted to see the view from the top of the mountain and boy was it the million dollar view!! It was just beautiful up there!! If you don't ski, you don't usually get to stand at the top of the mountain and look out, so I am really glad they have the tram. Makes me want to learn to ski confidently so when all the kids are older and skiing I won't miss out on the great views from the top! =) We had a late lunch at the restaurant up there and I took a bunch of pictures before saying goodbye and watching them ski down off the end of a cliff (ok, really it was just the trail, but it looked like it dropped right off!! Scared me to death! I kept telling Heath to make sure he kept a close eye on Drew!) Then I took a beautiful (empty) tram ride back down =) Just amazing.
I got back to the room in time (with my coffee and brownie in hand from the cafe ;) to see the last quarter of the Super Bowl. From what I gather, Christina Aguilera completely messed up the National Anthem. Just awful! AND the Black Eyed Peas were the half time show and were even worse. (I YouTubed it later, it was so SO bad!! Made me want to club Fergie with her microphone!) The commercials made me wonder if the companies spent all their money to buy the spot, then decided not to spend any money on the commercial. And whatever football I saw was ok.
The rest of the crew came back, rested for about 2 minutes, then decided, of course, that it was pool time! =) Since we went pretty early, the pool wasn't too crowded, but who cared?! As people filtered in, they were all people we knew (it was military weekend there, military skiis free on Monday, so it wasn't just ski team there, we had lots of friends from base there as well!) I just can't believe how fun it is to have all kinds of people there that you know! I love it! Luke fell asleep on me in the pool this time as the kids splashed around and played. By this time, we had everyone sleeping pretty good at night =) (Lucky for me, since we fed the kids a whole bunch of sugary desserts for dinner right before bed =)
Monday we packed up our stuff and loaded the car, sent the skiiers out to the mountain (it was another beautifully sunny day, how did we get so lucky?!) and Luke and I sat in the lobby hanging out with some of the other moms that weren't skiing and chatting with the people who were skiing as they came in. Again, so fun. It was almost like a retreat. I wish we had more weekends like that =) After a while, the kids came in and wanted to go swimming again, so I convinced Heath to take them. More friends in the pool and more of a good time for all before we packed up and headed home. We got to see the sunset on the way home. On the drive down there, it was night time and there were hundreds of stars out. It was just beautiful! We didn't even get that when we were in the middle of nowhere Australia.
I can't wait until we get to do another weekend like that. Too bad the kids have another race on Saturday, Heath has almost 6 full days off in a row. We would so be out of here!! =)
