Milestone of some sort

So what's so special about this picture you ask. The special part is that I'm not in it! For the first time since we all started skiing as a family I got to ride the chairlift by myself!! We went to a different local ski area today for the Saturday races and they have a 3 person chair that is really low to the ground when loading sooooo...Max can get on and off himself. He was so thrilled to ride with his brothers!! Of course he can only do this at this one area, but it was a little taste of what's to come for our family ski days. Wow, maybe Kerry and I can even have an full conversation on the chairlift with no interruptions. That will be amazing.

Anyhow, great day skiing and racing. Lots of fun for the boys, they even won some medals. Talk to you soon. Storm

Ski Racing

Hello, Today we had our first ski race against other teams. It was a nice day with good snow so that made it enjoyable right off the bat. The kids had a blast and did real well. It was interesting to see them get all nervous before the start. Our race results were mixed, but it made for great experience for future races. Nick had an excellent first run, but crashed in spectacular fashion on the second. He wasn't hurt and took it real well. Alex had two solid runs and ended up with the gold medal for the fastest combined time in his age group. He was thrilled!! Max had a great first run, but unfortunately the timer didn't record his time when he crossed the finish line due to sun in the lens of the electronic eye. So back to the top for a 're-run'. This run wasn't quite as smooth but he made it to the bottom where he got confused and skied around the finish line, then with all the race officials trying to be helpful and yelling and pointing where he needed to go he veered back to the right and smashed straight into the finish line barrier! All sorts of people were running to see if he was okay (he was fine, score another point for a helmet and face bar!!!) but now Max got embarrassed and started to cry. My heart really went out to him, but he recovered pretty quickly and said that he was done racing for the day...he only wanted to go over jumps from then on. Overall a great day and positive experience and they are all looking forward to next weekend when they get to race at Hilltop Ski Area in Anchorage. I've attached some pics and video for anyone interested. Talk to you soon. Storm

Backcountry!

Hello blog viewers. I got out yesterday and we went backcountry skiing in Turnagain Pass. Backcountry simply means that we went skiing in the mtns not at a resort, of course that means you get to hike up as well. Anyhow, it was a beautiful day and the avalanche danger was really low so we were able to ski some really fun lines. We skied 2 runs for a total of about 4000 ft of vertical. Man do your legs burn after one of those. I was so cramped up after my second run that I couldn't even stand up for a few minutes. We took some quick video and while its not great it should give you an idea of what it was like. Unfortunately the camera really doesn't show how steep things are, especially when you are filming up the hill, so you'll just have to take our word for it. I'm in the yellow jacket. The snow was great, not super deep but soft and fun. I hope the videos come out. The pictures just show some of our tracks and the great view from the top. You can even see the car and highway about 2900 ft below us in one photo. Take care, Storm

Finally Back!

Hello friends and family. It appears that time got away from us (again) and we haven't posted in forever. Sorry. First the weather turned brutally cold for almost 2 weeks, and while we still skied and did some stuff it was way too cold to take off your gloves to operate a camera. Then it got ridiculously warm for 10 days, we're talking like 45+ and melted literally all of our snow, total bummer. It makes me almost want to cry, it even rained for 2 and a half days!! Anyhow, life goes on. The kids are loving school, swimming and skiing and the multitude of other activities they are involved in. Their favorite pastimes seem to be destroying the house and attempting to construct a legitimate sentence that also contains a normally 'outlawed' potty word. Of course as soon as one of them manages to pull this off the other two instantly mimic it, thus giving them all the sick satisfaction of 'legally' using a bad word. It would be absolutely hilarious if we weren't worried about actually raising them to be polite productive citizens. The pics are of the kids on ski team picture day. They had a friends and family race the other day and the kids did great. Max even skied so well that they are letting him officially participate in the races from now on.

Today we went to the Anchorage ice fishing jamboree. It's all set up for the kids and is a lot of fun. Normally we get completely skunked at these things. In fact Nick even commented on the way there that 'fish don't really like us do they Dad?" Not today my friend!! We had a fish on about every 45 seconds! And I had to make the kids stop at one point so that I could give my wet, exposed hands a chance to warm up since all I was doing was baiting hooks and removing fish. They caught about 15 fish total, 3 of which we kept since they were hooked badly. Max was dragging them out as fast as I could put bait on his hook. Then towards the end they said the next person to catch a fish wins a fishing pole.....Alex won the pole! It was a lot of fun. Of course I'm thinking that fishing doesn't really get any better than this and I told the kids as much. Their reply was that the best part of the day was when the 'old guys' at the playground let them use the metal detectors to find 'buried treasure'. I'm thinking what a great fishing experience and they're thinking that the 'Prospectors Club' and finding dimes in the snow was the best thing ever. Sometimes I wonder about these kids...who's raising them anyhow?! So the picture was of Max with his first fish, after that I didn't have time to get the camera out.

Kerry and I also escaped the other night with our neighbors and went to dinner and the Symphony (is that even spelled correctly?). It was a great time. Fun to dress up and go out with no KIDS! Doesn't KM look awesome?! The next day we were supposed to go skiing, but since it was raining.... we went the other direction to Hatcher Pass. We went snowshoeing and had a blast digging a big tunnel fort under the snow. The snow was so deep that the dogs could barely get through it and we had to put them back in the car. Of course the kids were just winging around everywhere on top of the snow in their little snowshoes. It was pretty cool. The pics are from inside the fort and one looking back towards the entrance.

So everything here is going fine...just trying to live up to the title of our blog site! I threw in a few sunset pics, and no they weren't taken at noon, it was at least 1530! Talk to you all again soon. Storm

Merry Christmas!

Here are a few of the highlights:

Max asked for "eyeballs; two" from Santa. Santa delivered. Storm got a duck hunting hat and Kerry got 12 inches of snow!! :):):):) [OK, I tried to move the pictures around and froze this thing up for about 15 minutes...that was fun. The pictures are now staying wherever they happen to be.] We had a wonderful Christmas here in Eagle River; Storm's mom Pat was here with us, which is always fun. They boys went absolutely bananas over their gifts, and so we are all very happy and thankful...and Mom and Dad are very tired. The boys woke up at 0430, "Santa came! Santa came!", they stayed up for about 90 minutes playing with their stocking goodies in their room and then passed out until 0930...which was far more reasonable. Today we went sledding and played in all the fluffy, gorgeous snow. It came up to the dogs chests in some areas....they were sprinting all over the place, having an absolute ball. I took some pictures of all of that, but I will have to find Storm's camera in order to get the pictures loaded on here. I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas; thank you for making ours tons of fun! Much Love from "up here", KM

Holiday Play

Well tonight Nick was Rudolph in the school play. He did a great job and the play was pretty entertaining. He told me yesterday that he was nervous about being on the stage in front of all the adults. I told him not to worry that was completely normal, in fact being on stage would make a lot of the adults nervous too. That made him laugh. Here's a little piece of the video, Max was on my lap during the filming, hence the shaky hand. Storm

December Sunrise

Hello everyone, not a lot new going on but I have a few pics you might like. I went skiing this morning in a place called Arctic Valley which you can basically see straight across the Eagle River from our house. Anyhow we got up there around 0930 and were treated to a beautiful sunrise. We ended up skiing 2 runs in fairly decent snow, not epic but no avalanches either! Either way it was good to be out and getting some exercise. I'll try to get some more pics of the boys this weekend. Take Care, Storm