Christmas re-cap...

Well another Christmas is over. Melissa and I had a wonderful holiday. Christmas eve we hit the slopes at Welch for what turned out to be one of the best days of Minnesota skiing ever. We had gotten about 5” the night before so I figured the conditions would be good, but we had no idea how good it would be. The snow was deep in areas and was so nice and soft, it was amazing. Melissa and I had a blast! It was so nice to have real snow to ski on, instead of manmade stuff and ice…
For Christmas Eve dinner I made a shrimp and pasta dish that I found the recipe for in a Cooking Light magazine. It was really good. But I was a little sad to say that for the first time in 39 years I didn’t have Lasagna for dinner. That was a tradition my mom started and I carried on after she died. I decided it was time to start a new tradition so Melissa and I decided that we are going to make a new fancy dinner from a recipe every Christmas Eve. I think that will be really fun. The Shrimp Pasta turned out to be excellent and will go into our rotation for dinners. It was a pretty simple dinner and it can easily be altered into a few different variations. We are going to try making it next using chicken instead of shrimp. I am thinking it will be really good.

Christmas day we got up and opened presents, luckily Santa Claus stopped by the house so there were a few things under the tree. I think Melissa really liked her gifts. I got her a few small things that I knew she would like; her “big” gift was a necklace from Tiffany’s. It was a great surprise and she really liked it so I was happy. I got some fun stuff as well. I got a Flip video camera, which I really wanted, a couple Moleskine journals, some cologne and a calendar for desk at work. After presents we went snowshoeing over at Lebanon Hills park, that was a blast. We hiked about 1.5 miles, the snow was perfect and it was great back in the woods. It was awesome, I can’t wait till we go again. Christmas night we had some friends over for a very casual dinner. It turned out to be a really fun night.

Sunday Melissa and I went to the Wild game; we had to leave early sadly because Melissa had a gallbladder attack that turned out to be really bad. She went to the doctor on Monday and then had an ultrasound Tuesday to see if it needs to come out. We are waiting for the results. So this week might turn out to be interesting.
Overall the weekend was great, we had a great time doing stuff that we love, we had some good food and a lot of laughs. Life is good.

Christmas always makes me sad, I miss my parents a lot during this time of year. It is always hard since Melissa and I don’t really have anyone except each other which is great but I miss the “family” stuff. But it always makes me remember all of the good times we had when I was little which is good…

Snow

Although we are finally having a true Minnesota winter it is numbers like these that make me sad inside

Last 48 Hours:

Alta 47"
Snowbird 37"
Mammoth 102"

I can't even imagine what skiing in that kind of snow would be like. I wonder if I could even do it... Well, at least we are finally getting some snow around here. Last night we got another 5" or so and it looks like we are getting some more later this week, which will be cool, Melissa and I are planning on skiing Friday and maybe Saturday mornings. I am looking forward to getting out there again. Melissa and I went skiing at Welch for a bit on Sunday and sadly it sucked. It was so icy and crappy that it was just no fun. I hate to admit but I might becoming a snow snob, which is really going to suck if that is the case. *sigh*

I am really looking forward to Christmas. I love Christmas and all of the stuff that comes along with it. Melissa and I spend Christmas together which is so awesome, we usually make a couple fun dinners and just relax. This year on Christmas I am going to open a bottle of 1998 Dom Perignon, I am really looking forward to it, we will have a champagne brunch with Eggs Benedict, Melissa and I try to do that once a year, it is always really nice and we have a lot of fun.

I am glad my classes are done, I am now waiting for grades so that should be interesting. I am hoping for the best but my A&P class was the hardest class I have ever taken. Hopefully it won't kill my GPA to badly.

Think more snow!

Snowmaggedon!!!

So I basically did the most awesome and the dumbest thing ever this weekend. Melissa and I ventured down to Welch to go skiing right in the middle of the biggest and dangerous snowstorm Minnesota has seen in almost 20 years. The storm ending up bringing just a little over 20” of snow to most of the Twin Cities area, besides the heavy snow the wind was blowing about 20 miles an hour so basically the entire drive from our house to Welch was done with about 10 feet of visibility. Awesome, it was a little scary. The roads were in fairly decent shape, mostly because the wind was blowing the snow off them, but you could see the drifts forming on the sides of the road. It took as only an hour to get from our house to the Welch parking lot. We got there and I was surprised to see we weren’t the only people that decided to take advantage of what turned out to be the biggest snowfall Minnesota has seen in 20 years. We found a great parking spot and got dressed and headed up the lifts. I have never seen it snow so hard, you could maybe see 3 chairs ahead. It was crazy. We got off the chair and started down, Wild Finale. The snow was deep and it was pretty soft which was pretty dang nice. Melissa and I both brought our powder skis. She was trying out her new Volkl KiKu’s and I had my Volkl Mantra’s. It was amazing to be skiing that kind of powder here in Minnesota. We found the best snow on Dan’s Dive and Bakkelyka they were a little protected from the wind so the snow was just piling up, we lapped those runs a few times and had fresh tracks every time it was snowing so hard. In fact I experienced snow blindness for the first time ever it was weird. We skied hard for about 2 hours and watched the weather get worse and worse, we decided to head out. I am glad we did. The drive home was so crazy. The drifts on 50 were about 2-3’ high and when I would hit them they would go over my car. Visibility was about 5-10’ the road was closed just outside of Mielsville so we had to take a detour through Hasting which turned out to be better, 61 was in good shape as was Hastings. The drive from Hastings down 55 to 42 turned out to be a breeze. So that was really nice. We got home and found 4’ drifts in our drive way, so we had to shovel a path so I could get my car in the garage. I have never seen so much snow in my life; I think it was because of the wind more than anything. The snowstorm in 91 brought way more snow but didn’t have the winds so the drifts weren’t as big. We got in the garage and started to laugh about how stupid it was to actually head out skiing in that weather. We were so glad that we did go though, it was epic! I was glad Melissa got to try here new skis in some real snow before heading west with them. She was a little nervous about skiing them because they are so fat and a little longer than her old powder skis.

The rest of the weekend seemed uneventful after Saturday’s adventure. We ended up running a couple errands and I wrote a paper for one of my classes, which I am happy to say will be done this week. It will be nice to take a break from school for a bit. My next 2 classes start up again in March so I have a couple months off. I am hoping to get a lot of skiing in. Life is good. 60 days till Big Sky.

Random Thoughts...

My co-worker left for a month vacation in Vietnam yesterday. I like him will miss him while he is gone. His wife is from Vietnam so they return every few years to visit her family and travel around the country. It is fun to listen to him talk about his past adventures over there. Sounds like a very interesting place. I have asked him to bring me back a small carved Buddha. I am hoping that he will find something interesting for me.

My other co-worker left the day after Thanksgiving for a year of service in Afghanistan. He is in the Army and this will be his second time over there. I was sad to see him leave as well. I sent some small plastic toy dinosaurs along with him. I gave him instructions to send me pictures of the toys in different places during his tour. I appreicate his humor, so it will be interesting to see what kind of photos I get back from him. I have also instructed him to return the toys to me when he returns to work in 13 months...

I will miss my friends while they are gone, I wish them both safe travels.