Aspen, Patagonia, Costco

Our fun continued when we drove to Aspen with the group and saw the X-Games (and Shaun White!). It was very cool.  And we were absolutely freezing. We expended some major calories trying to get warm out there!

Freezing, but pretty. And lots of rich people wearing furs. haha.

Shaun White! He's only 5'8". I googled his height when I saw him pass us and he didn't look much taller than me. He didn't win unfortunately.

I think his name is Danny Davis and I think he took home the gold. All these snowboarders were little guys.

Graffiti'd rendition of Christian and Olin license plates from a booth at the X-games

Fueling up for the evening of standing outside in 7 degree weather.

Me and the Aspen bear. I look scarier than him.

The group of 9 that drove over. We had a lot of fun playing 'name that song'

Slope style! Half pipe!

Back home, puop's flight got canceled so she got treated to a Costco lunch and an Olin tantrum

I am a major sucker for Patagonia! Even though it ain't cheap...but just look at the cuteness

We had a nice, leisurely two days of skiing. Minimal blacks, lots of greens and blues :) 

Vail

We are spending the week in Vail! It has been a great vacation, just me and Dae and some of his friends from college doing some skiing and eating and browsing Vail Village.

My mom has spent the week in Richland watching the kids, thankfully.

Library time drawings

Brunch at new French restaurant Lepice

Facetiming

Leelee made these star/heart things for everybody. Puo Puo got the teeny tiny heart at the top. My mom and I laughed so hard...

Approaching Eagle airport

Vail!

Haaawwwwks won!!!!!

YMCA soccer & Parent Swap

Kids started YMCA soccer today. They both loved it!  Thank goodness...(basketball was not met with such enthusiasm last quarter)

Dae's parents left this morning and we literally swapped them for my mom. We drove them to the Pasco airport to get their rental car, and picked up my mom while we were there. They even crossed paths while there, so we snapped this shot...

It has been totally cold and rainy here. Yuck!

Mustaches

Olin drew this diagram, and he said "baba has a mustache, and mama has a mustache". (Should I be worried that this is how he envisions me?) In all fairness, he's really into mustaches. Also, a side note, he's always drawing these types of faces these days on his drawings.

Kids were watching Curious George in front of my new gallery wall. The map is the one Leelee made at school. The two small flowers are ones that Olin colored in. The (crooked) handprint is Olin's. Lower right drawing is Leelee's from a month ago. Seattle prints are ones we bought at Pike Place Market. Koi fish were a housewarming gift from my friend Tessa. My sister took the small wedding photo. And the fine abstract art is from Ikea. haha!

The gallery wall irks me just a little because the whole thing is a little too high. But Dae brought up a good point in that we cannot have the prints too low or the kids will wreak havoc on them.

On my drive to work this morning, there was a halo of dark clouds and this clear part in the middle. Looked cool.

Schweitzer

Schweitzer! We had a few takeaways from our first family ski trip this past weekend:

1) Leelee did great skiing! He skied his little heart out. He actually skied more than anybody in the family, poor guy, with a total of 4 lessons. We worked him to the bone. haha. But when we left, he already was asking when we were going to return to Schweitzer and when he could ski next.

He got to go on the bunny hill chairlift at his third lesson. Schweitzer has quite a few bunny hill options (easy easy to a little bit harder) which is really nice.

Got off the chairlift without falling!

2) Kids loved the little bunk beds in the room, and Olin continually climbed up and would yell "I can't get down, it's too dangerous!" over and over and over until one of us finally got up and fetched him. (If we had a dollar for every time he said "dangerous" this weekend...)

Our room was a TOTAL disaster.

3) Olin did not do so hot at his lesson. He would lay in the snow for prolonged periods of time and the instructor would pretty much have to drag him up. We were watching from a little distance so Dae finally stepped in and relieved the instructor. We took Olin for a couple of very slow spins down the bunny hill while Leelee continued his lesson. For the rest of the trip, baby alternated between being super cute and super attitude-filled.

The views down into Lake Pend Oreille (I think) are beautiful

4) From what we gathered at our first time here, we love Schweitzer. It's a solid 4-hour drive from home, but the little Village is small (basically it's just Schweitzer resort and its little shops), cute, and it is ski-in which I love. Sandpoint, 13 miles down the mountain, is a town of population 8000 and has a few pretty decent restaurants and is surprisingly a cute town.

Schweitzer village

Hot tubbing

the three Lee men in their thermals

Little ski boots - they were so small!

These tight Helly Hansen thermals, with his big head and ski boots, cracked me up every day

Christian Report card #1

Christian Report Card #2: needs to work on remembering his coach's names. haha.

Christian report card #3: The last part reads "We had a blast skiing on all the different runs of Musical Chairs. He smiled the whole time"

5) The employees on the mountain are the nicest. Every single person we encountered was SO nice.

6) The kids loved their daily complimentary breakfast. Every day they would eat: scrambled eggs, a Danimals yogurt, bacon (Olin loves), a container of Kix cereal, a (diluted) juice, and a small donut if they finished their eggs. They ate a ton of eggs, I tell you.

7) In the dark, we missed the Spokane Krispy Kreme on the way up, so on the way home we did not make that mistake twice. Dae went ahead and ordered us a dozen and a half of those little puppies!

8) I made my family go to Winter Ridge natural food market in Sandpoint for lunch both Sunday and Monday. None of the three boys were overflowing with excitement, but I was so happy to get green juice, kombucha, and good healthy food! 

24 Hours of Snow

We woke up to snow on Sunday, surprisingly! It only stayed for 24 hours, but long enough for us to shovel the driveway (Olin lasted about 1 minute) and make a 'volcano' in lieu of a snowman. Snow wasn't great packing for snowmen. Although I did come to later find out that plenty of my friends and co-workers had managed a fine snowman! I guess we did not persevere long enough.

At church, Leelee made this little book. Apparently God helped him by giving him a "brain" (the big spot on his forehead). And I never knew he was so fond of bananas? I guess so...