I love the Olympics!

The Olympics start tonight! Yipee!

I am not a sports enthusiast.

But I LOVE the Olympics!
love love love it!

Snowboarding is my favourite (have to add that "u" since the Olympics are in Vancouver, one of my favourite cities in the whole wide world); then skating - both figure and speed, then skiing - freestyle, jumping and alpine; then bobsled and luge. I'll even watch curling 'cuz it's just so Canadian and I love Canada!

Then when they have the cutest mascots ever, I am nearly giddy with delight.

Looking forward to going to the Bowen's tonight to watch the Opening Ceremony!
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That good kind of fall on your face tired {Daily December 23}

Whenever Steve's family comes up to visit, we're guaranteed an active time. It's great, because we're pretty sedentary, but we love doing stuff and being w/ the fam. Today we went sledding at Pinecrest Lake. It's the same lake we go to with them in the summer when we're in the boat, but it gets drained in the winter.

The boat launch makes a great slope for sledding.Steve and Middle J take a ride down the hill.

And Max, their mom, sleds down with Big Brother R.

The first 1/2 hr, Youngest D at 4 years old wouldn't even consider going on a sled. But once he took his 1st ride with dad, you couldn't get him off the hill. He even went down the sled by himself several times. Unfortunately, my camera battery died. boo on me for not recharging my battery. I know better.

We were there 3 hours and on the 1/2 hr ride home, all 3 boys passed out in the car, exhausted by all the fun and activity. We couldn't believe it was only 3:30 when we had to wake them up when we got home. It felt like 7pm. But they were hungry and cold! So we had some snacks and hot chocolate, stoked the fire then ordered pizza for dinner.

Max and Steve have always been very generous with their cooking whenever they come up to visit. They do 99.9% of the cooking. So tonight, I wanted to share one of my recipes that my mom passed down to me, fried wontons. Would you believe that Big Brother R wanted to help make them? Freakin' awesome I tell ya!

A couple hours after dinner, I overheard R whispering into his dads ear, "What's for dessert?" So I asked him, "Do you like chocolate covered pretzels?" He smiled and answered "Yes!" So, you guessed it...we made my famous Pretzel Kisses and his 2 younger brothers were so excited to help, too! I can't tell you how much I love seeing the grins on those boys. And then to have them want to do stuff that I like doing? You know that heart of mine? It grew three sizes larger. Altho, I hope it wasn't 2 sizes too small to start with!
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Winter Blessings {Daily December 22}

I ended last nights post by hoping that the gentle snowfall would last throughtout the night. We woke up to 2" of fresh snow. I think the following photos will show whether or not the boys thought it was a winter wonderland or not.




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Home Full of Family {Daily December 21}

We're at the hideaway and Steve's family arrived just moments ago. Boys were sleepy from their 7 hour drive so are already on couches in the living room in dreamland. They have the toastiest room in the house, right next to the fireplace.
When we got here, it was raining. But now gentle snowflakes are falling from the sky. Hopefully it will continue through the night and the boys will wake up to a white winter wonderland.

photo from Thanksgiving of youngest nephews with their cousin, oldest nephew.
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It's not all fun and games

Sure, we bought the Rhino mostly to enjoy exploring parts of the country we can't see in the car. But last weekend it was used as a workhorse, as it will much of the winter.

Jimmy cut a bunch of wood from the trees we had to cut down last fall. Hurray for firewood, just in time for the cold weather.

He cut the wood and hauled it to the deck, where it'll be stored during winter for easy access.

We got our first bit of snow that weekend. We'll certainly put that freshly cut wood to good use this winter!
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Vignette

Main Entry: vi·gnette
Pronunciation: \vin-ˈyet, vēn-\
Function: noun
1: a running ornament (as of vine leaves, tendrils, and grapes) put on or just before a title page or at the beginning or end of a chapter; also : a small decorative design or picture so placed
2: a: a picture (as an engraving or photograph) that shades off gradually into the surrounding paper b: the pictorial part of a postage stamp design as distinguished from the frame and lettering
3: a: a short descriptive literary sketch b: a brief incident or scene (as in a play or movie)

I've been absent again from the blogisphere. We were at the hideaway for 4 days and when we got back, I must have still been in 'seclusion' mode.

When we got to the hideaway Friday evening, there was 30 inches of snow on the ground and 6 more inches fell that night. But we prepared for Sunday, which was warned as blizzard conditions and the likelihood of a power outage all day because of the expected high winds. We were told another 30-40 inches of snow could come down that weekend.

We were kind of looking forward to it. We've never been through a storm like that before, and we were prepared.

The neighbors, who live there full-time, were not looking forward to it. To them, it's a pain-in-the-ass rather than a novelty to us part-timers.

Well, it snowed only 8-10 more inches from Saturday morning till we left late Monday night. To the neighbor's delight.

When we left late Monday night, it was still snowing. On our way to the highway, the car, which has all wheel drive, hit a patch of black ice, and decided to do a 180. We weren't going fast, but we were going downhill, and we slowly slid across the road, slowly rotating to the left, till we hit the snowbank on the side of the street that the snowplows had left.

Luckily, no cars were behind us, no cars in front of us.
Luckily, we were going slow, 20mph, so as we skid, it was like watching it in slow motion and by the time we hit the snowbank, we had slowed down enough that it felt more like a strong bump rather than a crash.
Luckily, we rotated left towards the hillside, rather than right, towards the drop of the mountain side.
Luckily, there was soft snow for us to crash into.
Luckily, no damage to the car or to us.

So that's my short vignette of our weekend incident.
And I vignetted all the photos from our hideaway.
Which ironically, even tho the little crash was barely a blip on our weekend, it did shade the weekend a tiny bit grayer. But just around the bottom edge rather than all around.
Truth is, I had already forgotten about it till I started recalling the weekend to write this post, that's how insignificant it was. Phew!
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A cute amount of snow

We were at the hideaway since Thursday, but it didn't start to snow until Saturday night.

Total snowfall, about 3 or 4 inches.

I imagine my northern and eastern friends chuckling at that amount of snow, thinking "Awe, isn't that a cute amount of snow?"

The Bowens came up for the weekend, too.

However, since there wasn't any snow at the hideaway till Sunday, we drove up to Leland Snowplay on Saturday. It was the 1st time we'd gone and definitely won't be the last. Not only was there plenty of snow to sled down, it was snowing the whole day, too. Amazing what a couple thousand feet in elevation will do. Our cabin is at 4500 feet above sea level, the Snowplay is at 6300 ft.

It had rained at the cabin elevation all day Friday and Saturday so we were almost certain that it wouldn't snow at all.
But when we woke up Sunday morning, there was snow on the ground!

Dontcha love going to sleep at night and waking up to snow?

Or at least waking up to a "cute" amount of snow?

So right after breakfast, we all went out and played in the snow.




We were sorry that they had to leave after lunch.

Monday morning...


...the sun was shining.

But before Jimmy and I left to come home to the Bay Area that afternoon...
it was snowing again!

A fun, wintery weekend at the hideaway.
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Winter isn't too far away

During our drive this past weekend up into the high country of the Sierra Nevada's, once we passed a certain elevation, it started feeling a lot more like winter rather than fall.

Our first hint were these beautiful pinecones.
The sap on them looked like snow from a distance.

The further up we drove, winter kept showing more and more.
A leafless tree among the evergreens.

A sprinkling of snow on the high mountain peeks.


Very cold but not yet frozen water at Leavitt Falls.
Burr!

Break out your jackets, winter isn't far away.
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Snow Drift

Wind blowing atop Half Dome in Yosemite.

submitted to Thursday Challenge: Weather