Skiing

Spring skiing in February at Alpine Meadows.  We did find it a bit funny that we were skiing slush while the rest of the country was being attacked by a massive winter storm.  The boys are doing great on skis, we had several new milestones this ski trip.  Josh skied down Subway without a leash all by himself.  (Honestly it's seriously frightening because the child doesn't like to turn, slow down or look where he's going).  Ben rode up Roundhouse chair lift and even bigger news, rode up Subway and Meadow chair lift all by himself.  He had been practicing getting on and off on his own and wanted to prove to us that he could do it, so he rode the chair all by himself (I was a total wreck, thankfully I had Josh to hold on to so I didn't get too distracted).  The final photo shows the snowman they made with Nana, complete with chocolate buttons and eyes and a gummy bear mouth.  If you want to see more photos, click here.

Introducing...

We sold our campervan in New Zealand and we knew it was only a mater of time before we found an alternative solution to our nomadic adventuresome plans.  We decided that another campervan wasn't going to work at this stage, so Dan had been thinking about a trailer or perhaps a pop up trailer.  Our house in Grass Valley was broken into twice in the last month.  The headache that resulted from those episodes left a small insurance settlement to fix the damage.  Dan and my mother spent 3 long days scrubbing the paint off the walls, floors and windows.  So when Dan stumbled upon this vintage 1957 trailer he decided that's what he wanted to buy with the insurance money.  We're currently still working on a name for the trailer/caravan, but according to the various family members the names up for consideration are "Nadine, Camp and Fire Girl."  Not sure when we'll get our first weekend away, since it's not exactly summer here in California, but I'm pretty confident that we'll have some fun adventures in this fun little trailer.  And yes, we plan on keeping the cowboy theme!  If you would like a better look at some of these photos, click here.

Josh's 3rd Birthday

Welcome to Winter Wonderland

Here are some fun photos from our family Christmas ski days up at Alpine Meadows.  It was a real treat to get to take the boys skiing with their biggest fan clubs (Nana, Auntie Megan, Uncle Mino and Wes).  Josh got a new ski leash and the boy is on speed!  He is fearless, honestly, the little man will ski straight down anything.  He is super cute with his little tongue sticking out as he concentrates and his little legs holding steady as he plows on.  I think we're in for trouble when the boy learns out how to turn.  Ben is also doing well, getting a lot more confident and happy to plow on by himself.  Dan and I both got in some great runs, including some fresh snow.  I told Dan the last time I'd skiied 4 days in a row was over 6 years ago, what a great Christmas present.

7904 kilometers later

 We knew this was going to be an adventure, but I'm not sure we really knew what kind of adventure we were going to have.  In the end we traveled 7904 kilometers (4911 miles), slept in our tent 47 nights and visited countless playgrounds throughout the country.  We sampled wine, visited museums, went to a dozen swimming pools and built a number of sand castles.  We had our share of meltdowns and only one van breakdown.  We saw all sorts of animals, penguins and dolphins in their natural habit, while lion, tigers and giraffes in their non-natural environment.  We've read some books, baked some pizzas, eaten countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and taken 1,791 photos.  And now we've packed our 92 kilos (202 pounds) of official checked luggage (let's hope they don't charge for the car seats!) and are trying to figure out how many hours of movies we can watched between New Zealand and California.  Ben declared today that his favorite thing he's done in his entire life was the campervan adventure.  I'd say it was a success.

Taupo

After we all sort of fell apart in Raglan we decided that we needed to take it easy for our last full week in New Zealand.  We had previously organized a rendezvous with our friend Nicole, who lives in Wellington, and the farthest north she could drive was Taupo, so we decided to park it in Taupo.  Since we'd already been to Taupo on this road trip we took the non-tourist agenda and spent the week going to the park, the library, the pool, the gym and the Volcano Center.  Dan took the opportunity to do the Tongariro Crossing, see previous post and go mountain biking with Nicole.  We had a nice time hanging out in Taupo, not a bad place to recollect after many weeks on the road.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Dan spent his day hiking the classic New Zealand great walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  The 19 kilometer walk goes through the Tongariro National Park, home to some of New Zealand's active volcanoes.  Dan described the walk as like "walking on the moon."  His alarm went off at 4:45am this morning so he could catch the shuttle to the park.  The hike took him 6 1/2 hours and he was back at the holiday park by 5pm for dinner.  Our day seemed rather tame in comparison, a trip the library, the barber shop and a treat at a local cafe.