Lucy's Christmas Poem

Christmas Fun

The sun just barely glimmers
on the snowy rooftops as Santa's
reindeer's hooves gently touch and as the
snowflakes land so softly on the ground
as if in a mother's soft hands and
you hear Santa's footsteps above your
head Santa leaps to the chimney. He
plummets down to where the wonderful
Christmas tree stands but before I could
blink I saw presents under the tree and he
was up the chimney again. Merry Christmas!

(Lucy wrote this poem as David's present - below is a picture of the poem)

Snowshoe Adventure 12/27 - Hiking off "the Pass"

Yesterday feels like a really, really long time ago. 9 hours of work, a little uncontrolled inappropriate rage, several meals of involving lentiles and barley kind of make time drag on. Who woulda thought?

But yesterday was a wonderful day. David and I managed to convince Lisa to join us on our snowshoe adventure on the Teton Pass. We had billed it out as a "moderate" hike on the Phillips Canyon trail. Well, we had good intentions, of course, but not the best sense of direction. After maybe a few hours, maybe less, maybe more, we ended up on the top of the lower ridge above Jackson Hole to the west. Sally enjoyed the views.

We walked along quite a bit of the length of the ridge until we came to what appeared to be "the end" (looking out more to the north). I took a million shots, but I'll spare you.

It struck me as I was taking yet another vertical picture of aspens, that perhaps all of my "back East" family probably thinks I hike to the same place all the time, as all the pictures probably look exactly the same to them. Lisa, who is also from Pennsylvania, tended to agree with that.

This is why it's crucial to take "people" pictures, as to not bore the reader to death with "grand mountain view of the valley" pictures. I preferred this farther away shot to the close up, as David is enjoying the detailed zoom with which he has been able to point out my "crow's feet" in 12 megapixel glory.

This is David toward the beginning of the trek. This is when it still felt like the single digit temperatures yet and no disrobing had occurred.

This is further down the path, on our way back from the actual Phillips Canyon trail we missed in favor of the "power line" trail. We were working our way back toward the steep rock faces when we decided we had had enough. All for Sally's sake, of course, as always. Not because we were tired or anything. Not because we had hungry holes in our stomachs the size of the Jackson Hole. No, no, for Sally.

The Phillips Canyon trail leads to a glacial lake tucked into a cirque - I hiked there on Memorial Day in the pre-blog days maybe 4 years ago with the Russell-Fews. I was curious to see what it would look like in the winter, but I'm guessing we were about a mile or two short of our destination. Oh well - lake in winter probably looked like a big meadow of snow most likely.

The trail out has some great views of the pass area. Yesterday was perfectly clear, as was the day before. And no, I have not touched up any of the color to make the sky that blue - it really is THAT blue.

While I realize you probably can't see this too well, it's me standing at the crest of the lookout point before the last big downhill. Somehow for what I remembered being a relatively "flat" trail, we sure climbed up a lot of hills.

Today I am fairly glad to NOT be on snowshoes, but a little extra sunshine couldn't have hurt! The glow of a laptop screen does not count for "sunshine", I'm afraid.

Teton Valley Snowshoe Adventure 12/26 - Taylor Mountain

This winter may be known in my personal history as the winter of the snowshoe. With David out of commission in terms of downhill skiing, snowshoeing is the one winter activity he is technically allowed to do (aside from cross country skiing on the flat - but come on, this is David we're talking about!).

After finally seeing our kids off to their ski camp, we pretty easily agreed on heading to the Moose Creek trailhead and then up trail 037 toward Taylor Mountain. I note now that I "easily agreed", as about 30 minutes into the trek, I thought aloud, "Now, I've been here before. I knew it was like this, and I still agreed to it??" (See the fall Taylor Mountain post from a year ago).

Different people have different attitudes towards snowshoes. Some people see it as a way to peacefully walk in the woods, at a slow pace, perhaps searching for snowshoe hare prints, running across a few deer, taking some photos. Other people see it as a moderate form of exercise, what with the added weight on your feet, the at times deep snow, some inclines. Then there are those who are left to snowshoe because they have nothing else they can do in the snow... snowshoeing becomes serious business. We look for serious hills and seriously deep snow and some heart-pounding.

We found all that on the Taylor Mountain hike. The forest was amazing yesterday, with the ethereal crystallized snow blanketing all plants and trees, due to the freezing fog and wickedly cold (-7) temperatures early in the morning. You may notice in some of the pictures below that despite temperatures not reaching above 20, we still had to disrobe due to the extreme, penetrating heat you feel from the sun at those altitudes.

We hiked in total about 3 1/4 hours, reaching near the top of the 2nd rise (you actually hike along the edge of it in the summer - I have a picture near our turnaround point on the older post). I had been hurting for about 20 minutes, and worried for our puppy (right, you will believe that, right?), I convinced David to turn around and NOT try to climb to the top of the steepest looking ridge I had seen since climbing up the side of Sacajawea at Targhee (ouch!).

This hike featured our first use of the new Nikon Coolshot.







The last photo is a photo of the "magic tree". As we started the path, the light was shining through the forest, backlighting ONLY this tree.



This was our first "adventure" snowshoe (i.e., not at Targhee) this winter. Our pup Sally joined us, and while I was rather nervous about her abilities and stamina, she is quite the mountain dog. She absolutely loved the hike, never strayed too far away, romped in the snow, and even ran down the hills on the way out, putting on the brakes at times to do doggie donuts in the snow. My dog had a bit more stamina than I did, I hate to admit.

All in all, in spite of a bit of whining near the turnaround on my part, it was a fabulous day. The sky was amazingly blue, and to see the snow on the trees like that is quite a sight. I am sad that David does not get to do some of the activities he loves this winter, but on the other hand, I am happy to have a companion on my types of winter sports! I would never have done something like this on my own, and so rather than be relegated to the Targhee treadmill (aka the cross country track), I get to spend several hours exploring with David.

Leading up to Christmas

In case you thought I started hibernating for the winter, here's a post to bring me back to the blog. I was gifted a new Nikon coolshot camera this morning from David (aka, the Ashton Kutcher camera), so hopefully the quality of my pictures will improve somewhat. The set featured in this post are the last set I took on my old camera.

We spent last weekend in Victor. It was fairly warm for the Teton Valley in December (mid-to-upper 30s). I managed to work on this year's blisters on my 1st cross country ski outing - Teton Canyon was groomed and ever so popular. However, as I headed into my 3rd mile with blisters beginning to form, I decided it wasn't exactly popular enough, nor the snow deep enough, as I considered that the bears might not be completely hibernated, nor the mountain lions slowed down enough by only 18 inches of snow. So I turned around before the end and headed back to the house to join Ethan and David.

Ethan was having fun using my camera - he said something that led me to believe he was expecting to be the owner of it soon (tip off of today's Christmas present). This was an interesting shot incorporating our newest family member.

Ethan also took several head shots of David. David is always looking for photos to use for conferences, journal articles, things of that nature. I thought Ethan did a nice job. It's difficult to catch David's eyes fully open (he says it's his lightning fast reflexes...).

Here's a solo shot of Sally (Sal-Sal, Sals, Sally-dog, etc.). I read my last post about her (from the day we got her), and really, I was nervous for pretty much no reason. She has been about as good as one could expect. I realized recently that I'm an unbelievably predictable woman in her mid-30s... my kids are growing older, should be about the time I am thinking of a new baby, and so what do I get... a puppy! Ugh, I hate being trite! The kids are a little frustrated with me because they think I spoil her as compared to my treatment of Sam. This generated a now near-famous Ethan quote, "But Lucy, Mommy still loves you even though you are not as cute as me!"

Ethan had a nasty ear-throat infection combination last weekend that kept him off the slopes. We had a fun time playing "The Game of Life" and Uno. After playing games for a few hours, I figured Sally needed a little outside time so we went to take a jaunt around our neighborhood. Oh, this is a fun story... So, I met one of the neighbors who also has some golden/lab retriever mixes - sort of odd Enligsh lady living alone. Well, so I'm standing there and she's talking about how we need to put an end to the loose dogs in the neighborhood when the much-maligned bulldog from our other neighbor's porch comes waddling over and pees on my leg and shoes.

You read that right - he peed on me! Absolutely disgusting. She said, "See what I mean?" His owner was rather horrified when we later talked to him, and I didn't see the beast again that weekend.

This brings us up to more recent times. Yesterday the kids guilted me into traipsing around the Ammon shopping area in search of gingerbread house kits. It sounded like a reasonable thing to do on Christmas Eve - so we searched and searched and eventually we located one with a pre-built house structure and one you had to construct yourself.

The boys had the pre-constructed house. They did a nice job decking it out.

While the children built gingerbread houses, I made cookies. My plan was to make batch after batch until all the chips, butter, and brown sugar I bought recently were gone. Here's a shot of David stuffing his mouth with one. He instigated a "cease and desist" order (I was at about 160 cookies), and so I stopped at 3 different varieties - peanut butter blossoms, oatmeal scotchies, and butter roll-outs. I plan to re-commence Monday, with cranberry-white chocolate-oatmeal cookies (at least). Perhaps the gluten-free dark chocolate cookies I promised to a co-worker.

One wonders how I ended up with five children on Christmas Eve, but somehow that seems to happen to me on my days off. Actually, with how the children were fighting and driving me out of my mind that morning, I didn't mind having them kept busy by others.

The girls prepared for the Christmas performance at church, where both Lucy and Ethan had speaking roles. It was quite a lovely little performance, with all the best Christmas songs and the sunday school children reading portions of a Christmas poem. It ended with a candle lighting ceremony.


We are having a very relaxing, laid back Christmas Day. On request of Lucy, we are having steak and King crab legs for our afternoon Christmas dinner. Not sure when any of us are going to get off the couch to make it. I think Ethan gave me his infection and my body is fighting it off valiantly, but it seems to require frequent catnaps to win the battle.

I found a somewhat amusing old post in my drafts folder from the first year of the blog that I posted today: Mooseheads in the Basement

I hope everyone is having a great Christmas. Lucy was very sad last night realizing we'd be all alone in Idaho.

Winter Sprint Meet 2009 - Another Team Record goes down

Yesterday we braved snowy I-15 to head down to Pocatello for our monthly swim meet experience. I just realized I didn't post about the last swim meet either - that one involved a harrowing experience on I-15, as well - with 5 hours of tense driving returning from Boise to barely make it to our flight back to Pennsylvania...

And so when I say "Another" team record goes down, I am referring to Ethan's performances at the Boise Y Thanksgiving meet the weekend before Thanksgiving. This is Ethan's FOURTH year competing as an 8&Under - finally, he gets the "duckies" (for some reason they are all giving out little Christmas rubber ducks to heat winners this year). At the Boise Meet, he had all first places but one race (2nd in breastroke), and broke two team records - 50 Backstroke in 41.35s and 25 Fly in 19.01s. Lucy also performed well, although there wasn't a race in particular that sticks in my memory.

I have the detailed results from the Pocatello meet yesterday. This is one of the smaller meets we go to, although it still has a ton of kids in each event (~40). Our goal for the day was to get three best times out of the five races they swam - Ethan obtained 5 best times, and Lucy 4.

Ethan's results:
25 Backstroke - 20.35s, 2nd place
25 Breastroke - 22.13s, 1st place
50 Freestyle - 36.34s, 1st place
100 IM - 1:34.02, 1st place
25 Freestyle - 15.67s, 1st place ** New team record **

I was a little concerned that he might have lost his good spirits after the losing the backstroke (he stated angrily, "Why would anyone want to swim a 25 backstroke! It's just too short!"), but he generally has a pretty positive (if perhaps a tad over-confident) attitude about competing.

Lucy's results:
50 Backstroke - 39.8s, 7th place
50 Breastroke - 49.55s, 8th place
100 IM - 1:25.21, 2nd place
50 Freestyle - 33.63s, 3rd place
50 Butterfly - 36.64s, 2nd place

Lucy had a wonderful attitude for most of the meet, which I found to be the most impressive part of the day. She has been a little negative at the earlier meets this year, fairly frustratingly so. This meet, she was upbeat and fun... until the 50 Freestyle. With a lofty goal of ~30s in mind (her best to date is 32.5s), she wasn't too likely to hit the mark - I hadn't realized how seriously she was taking it. She started freaking out a bit afterwards, but after about 15-20 minutes, she was mostly back to normal again. I wasn't sure how the 50 fly would go, but lo and behold, the heart of Lucy was on display - she swam so hard you could even see the determination in the stroke itself - forceful and strong. She didn't end up winning first place, but she was only 1/2 second behind her - incredible considering in the last meet she was over 2 seconds behind this same girl. She finally broke the 38s barrier. She's now about 2 seconds away from qualifying for sectionals in this even, as well. I was so proud of how she turned her attitude around! Those are the lessons she needs to learn...

Hopefully I will get back into taking some pictures for my next posts. We have been visited by about 6-8 inches of snow, which makes for some nice shots.

A New Family Member

Sorry for that last post... I pasted my update to the swim team website in the wrong blogger window. I am maybe a little overworked right now....

Which would make you wonder why I decided to take the kids to the animal shelter today. Exactly what you might expect to happen, happened. We broke our own rules -- the dog is younger than we wanted (it is 4-5 months) and is probably a bit of a shedder. However, I would like you to look at the following pictures, imagine my children's most eager, pathetic looks, and try to see if you were in my shoes what you would do.





I originally wanted a different dog yesterday - a little older than this one. But the kids didn't have a 100% great feeling on it. It was a little too jumpy and crazy - in fact, as we were trying to leash it to go outside, it ran into the cat area. It was rather wild.

So anyway, back to this one. She was dropped off in the "Drop Box" at the animal shelter with her sister pup (which was black), and so basically we have no information on this dog. Oops, there's another rule we broke. She seemed so mild and easy going... it just seemed like such a good fit I didn't want to pass it up.

But now I need to face up to the fact that this probably wasn't the most convenient time. I am a bit frustrated with myself for breaking my own rules. But I really can't change my mind at this point ... I have been reading up on housetraining dogs. So far, we've had successes and failures - and really, the failures were our own fault. We had to go straight to the parent-teacher conferences after the pound (she was in the school for quite awhile with no problems). Then we went to the pet store to get some things (again, no problems). Then to get some take out. And finally home. We gave her water because she seemed really thirsty. And as we are used to an older dog, thought nothing of taking her out right away. The kids bathed her and she had a lot of excitement - lot of excitement and a lot of water is probably more than any young dog can handle. I have to get into toddler mode -- take her out every hour or two - like you have to put a 3-year old on the toilet. I also have a crate I can use.

I hope I can get through this... Well, really, I have to. I made the choice. And anyway, since the kids have been in bed, she just lies next to me at the desk, calm as can be. It's quite amazing, actually.

I guess we will see how the night goes. She's ridiculously cute. I hope for the best.

Lucy said to Ethan, "We can't decide to take her back because she had an accident. That would be like Mommy giving us up for adoption because we didn't learn something perfectly the first time."

Her name is Sally. Ethan named her.