Juneau!!

Hello readers.  As many of you know, this last weekend we took a family trip to Juneau for the Alaska State Championship Ski Races for the 14 and under age groups.  This meant that only Nick would be racing as Alex and Max raced in the 10 and under classes a few weeks ago.

We left on Thursday morning and Alaska Airlines delivered us to Juneau about an hour and a half later.  We spent the rest of Thursday sight seeing and we even got a tour of the State Capital.

The kids messing around on the waterfront.

 They were fascinated with the old fashioned phone booth with a rotary dial!!

A tour of the Speaker of the House offices.

Signing the Governor's visitor log

Fun in the stairwell

Alex won some drum sticks!

Our sleeping quarters for the weekend.  Sort of like being at camp again.  The kids loved it, but Kerry and I were definitely ready to leave by Sunday!

The ski area, EagleCrest, was fantastic.  Great prices, amazing terrain, lots of snow, friendly people and no crowds.  Friday we just practiced and let the kids free ski and get used to the area.  Saturday and Sunday were race days.  Not many pics from Saturday as it was dumping snow all day.  Saturday was the Giant Slalom race.  Nick ended up 7th for the day after 2 runs.  Sunday was the Slalom and Nick ended up 6th by the smallest of margins.  He was really hoping for a top 5 finish and a medal, but it just wasn't to be this year.  Most importantly, he was very pleased with his performance and left a happy camper.
Alex and Max were afforded the opportunity to be forerunners on the race course.  A forerunner is one of the first few down the course to check the timing system and ensure the course is ready to race.  Both of the them skied great and they would've placed about 10th-12th had they been racing for real.  They loved it and it gave them some experience on the big race courses.
It has been an amazing season with lots of success for the boys.  We are all glad its over for the moment, but we are already looking forward to next year.  Here's a bunch of photos.  Enjoy.

Alex

Some dude's yard on the way to the ski area

Nick on the Slalom course

Max running the course.  After putting a GoPro on him we found that he sings and talks to himself the whole way down the course.  I imagine this is why is mouth is always open!

Storm with a fellow coach

Nick, Storm, and the head coach, Brad.

As you can see Nick wasn't to broken up about not getting a medal!

A tired but happy crew waiting for the plane home.

Spring break stuff

So I had this vision that I would record all the stuff we did on Spring Break and make a great video and have this awesome blog entry.  Well, it turns out that may have been biting off a little more than I can chew right now.  Especially since I keep updating the blog because it seems like a worthwhile way to not finish doing our taxes.  Anyhow, I decided to use mostly still photos.  So here goes.

First we are going to Juneau at the end of the month so Spring Break was somewhat of a 'Staycation', but I told the kids we would visit a resort town anyhow...they weren't impressed.

So we headed on up the road to Fairbanks.  This was a trip put together by the ski team, there was no race in Fairbanks, just a different place to ski.  It turned out to be a lot of fun and we had a great day.  Of course it didn't hurt that the day we were there was the warmest day Fairbanks had seen since October!!  Kind of a fun area to ski, and instead of a chairlift they used buses to get you back to the top, a feature which would be really nice on a super cold day!

After the ski day we all headed over to the World Ice Sculpture Championships.  It was simply amazing.  Pictures don't do it justice, but its the best I have.  Plus they build all sorts of stuff for the kids to play on and slide down.

Its a giant ice Mosquito!!

We didn't feel like skiing for another day, especially since Sunday wasn't a nice warm blue sky day so we left a day early and headed home.  On the way we stopped in Nenana and bought tickets for the Ice Classic.  For $2.50 per ticket you get to try and guess when the ice will go out on the river.  Last year the winner got $350k!!!  They build a big tripod and put it in the river with a cable attached to a clock.  When the cable moves far enough, the clock is stopped and the closest guess (to the minute) wins.  The kids are all excited about what they are going to do with the money!!  Seems like they think they've already won.

Later in the week we went out to Hatcher Pass to do some sledding, dig some forts and just enjoy the outdoors in the mtns.

Friday was Max's Birthday, he was thrilled with all his presents and phone calls!!  His party is TBD!!

Saturday brought the 10 and under State Championship Ski Race, hosted at our local hill.  Both Alex and Max were eligible to race.  There was a Slalom, a Giant Slalom and a mini Super-G.  The kids had a great day.  Alex ended up 5th in all three events and earned enough points to be the 5th fastest 10 and under male skier in the state!!  They also break it down by age group for the individual events and Max got 2nd in the Super-G and the Giant Slalom and he is the State Champion in the Slalom for the 8 and under division!!!   They both had some fantastic runs and are already looking forward to next year.  Nick will be skiing in the 13 and under Championships in Juneau at the end of the month.

That's it for now.  Thanks for reading.