I stopped blogging after this summer because a lot of changes were happening in my life, and I didn't feel like documenting everything here during that time. I know some people record everything on their blogs--the good and the bad--but I wanted to keep this as a place to look back on fond memories.
When I stopped blogging this summer, I actually thought that I was done with blogging forever. I didn't really even think about this blog very much until this winter when a few people asked to reference the memories stored in these blog posts. It was so nice to look back on the memories and the pictures accompanying them (and so easy to find!!) that I thought it would be fun to start again and record the memories that we are creating now for the future!
This Christmas was a really special one for our family because our family was the biggest it has been yet! Baby bro brought his girlfriend and Zenas came with me to visit Seattle, and it was so nice to be a part of a big, bustling household! =) Usually, we open presents on Christmas morning, but this year, Peter, Zenas and I decided to go skiing, so we put off the normal Christmas festivities until the next day. Last winter, our family went to Schweitzer to ski, but due to a few scheduling conflicts, we stayed near Seattle (Stevens Pass) for this winter break!
Did you know that Idaho is beautiful? Idaho isn't the most talked-about state in the world, and thanks to one of those United States picture puzzle thing I had when I was younger, Idaho will forever be linked to potatoes in my mind. Did anyone else have that? Every state had a picture on it to 'represent' it, and it was one of those supposedly educational geographical things from my childhood... Anyway, 'potatoes' doesn't really scream 'beauty' in my head, but gosh dang it, it IS beautiful here!
To be fair, it was beautiful all the way from Seattle to here (because we drove through the snow and the ice and the whole nine yards to get here)...
but I've already mentioned in every Seattle blog post just how beautiful it is there, so I'll just skip right to Idaho haha.
The reason for our Idaho visit was to try the slopes at Schweitzer!
We used to go skiing every year, but in the past couple of years, I couldn't go because of auditions and whatnot... you know, musician problems.. haha I thought it would take awhile for me to get the swing of things again since it had been a few years since I strapped on some skis, but surprisingly, it only took 3 trips down the green slope, and we were back hitting the blue/diamond slopes!
with the crew ;)
and really, you want to be hitting the higher slopes because that's where the view is!
I mean, isn't that just incredible?
On the second day, the weather wasn't as clear, but the view was still breathtaking! it was breathtaking in more ways than one because even though the last picture above looks like it's a gentle slope, there is an actual ridge right where the person disappears, and that drop is almost vertical! We all survived though ;) haha
baby bro and Chang decided to snowboard, and dad and I strapped on some skis. It was pretty amazing how quickly Chang picked up the snowboard! In 1 day, he was riding with us!
a little video of the 4 of us riding down one of the slopes, if you would like to see ;)
towards the end of both of the days, it started to snow, and all of us came home looking quite frozen (including my panda. look at his icicled nose!) haha
Chang also developed a bunny tail ;) He says he isn't sure how such a perfectly round ice ball formed on his sweater, but we had a good long laugh over it haha
Once we got home, all we wanted to do was... thaw. so we all hopped into the hot tub until we all became prunes!
Then we had dinner, and played boardgames before we fell asleep!
I can't think of a more perfect way to spend a couple of days with the peeps I love the most! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if David could have joined us, but hopefully next year he can come! =)
I hope you all had a wonderful end of the year spending time with your family! Can you believe that 2016 is almost here? D= I'm going back to Boston to spend NYE and New Years day with David before jetting out again, and I can't wait to see him soon =)
Happy New Year to all of you, and thanks for stopping by!
