What a weekend.

I had the best weekend. It was a long weekend which made it even better since I had an extra day to do fun stuff.

This weekend was filled with lots of outdoors activities and music. It started Friday night with a very tired wife. Melissa had a bad week at work so instead of doing something out and about on Friday night we decided to have a nice easy dinner at home and watch a movie. It was great. We relaxed and just hung out at home. Perfect evening.

Saturday we decided to head out and do some cross-country skiing. The weather was good, low teens for highs and the sun was sort of out, so we packed up the car and headed over to Lebanon Hills park and skied a short loop. It took a little practice to get our cross country rhythm back, to be honest I am not sure that I really ever had a cross country rhythm but it was fun to cross country ski again. We haven't done that for a couple of years since there has been a lack of snow. But anyway the skiing was fun. After skiing we went over to Ho Ting for lunch. Arguably the best Chinese restaurant in the Twin Cities. We have been going there every Saturday for the past few weeks. Lots of fun and really good food. Then Saturday night we went down to Dulono's Pizza in Mineapolis for a little pizza a couple beers and some bluegrass music. The band playing was a local bluegrass band The High 48s. They were really good. And I kept looking at the banjo player thinking, "I know him." Well it turned out that I did indeed know him. He was an old friend that I used to skateboard with growing up. It was great to see him. I spoke with him for about 25 minutes during their set break. Awesome time. The food was good, but the music was excellent. What a fun place.

Sunday we slept in a bit and when we got up it was snowing like crazy outside, big giant fluffy flakes. So we decided to take the cross country skis out again and try a different part of Lebanon Hills park. We decided to go over and ski the trail by the horse trail at Jensen Lake. Turned out to be a great choice. We did about a 4 mile loop which runs in some pretty heavy woods. It was really beautiful out there, snowing and really quiet. It was great. Melissa was like a machine though and skied like a mad woman. I had a lot of trouble keeping up with her. It was pretty funny. I kept saying, "Hey lets stop and enjoy the outside and the pretty snow falling." And she would have now of that. Gotta keep skiing!!! UGH I hurt pretty bad when we were done! But what a great time.

Monday I had the day off with it being MLK day. Melissa surprised me by taking the day off as well. It was a great surprise. I had plans to meet my friend Chris (aka Berry) down at Welch to ski, so Melissa joined us. We had a great time skiing. The snow that fell on Saturday soften everything up down there and there was good snow to be found everywhere, not very much ice which makes it so much better. We also got our first crack at the new back bowl. New terrain, all black runs. They were really fun. Narrow, steep and tight, you really had to make your turns or you would end up in the woods. My new favorite run out there is Adams Abyss, a nice little double diamond which is very narrow and has a couple of really good drops. It was really fun. We skied mostly in the new back bowl, finding our way around and creating new and fun lines. It isn't completely done back there, but the it should be pretty sweet when it is done. We skied for about 5 hours and then came home. Melissa and I ran a couple of quick errands and had some dinner at Old Chicago...

It was an excellent weekend. We had fun doing everything that we did. We are headed up to Lutsen this weekend. That will be really fun. Melissa and I decided to head up kind of last minute just to get away together. So I am really looking forward to that.