Skiing with Pi Lams at Northstar

A nice few days with old college alumni up at Northstar, staying at one of the guy's slopeside house.  Click on the picture above to see a short slideshow.

Conditions were very fast, enhanced by the fact that with this group you had to ski aggressively just to keep up.

Ice rink

Appropros for another icy day.

N*

Official Pictures from Northstar & Heavenly

With the Epic pass and/or RFid ski pass, the mountain has official photographers stationed at vista points taking photos of guests.  Here are pictures from our recent trip.  In each case, the lake in the background is the deep alpine waters of Lake Tahoe.

You can tell that they are higher quality than camera phone style pictures; their cameraman was working with a Nikon with a heavy duty flash set up and zoom lens.  This seems to be a pretty good perk for customers, who will probably respond well with photo purchases.

Backside runs...

...were not really any better than the front side.  It is snowing now though.

Flurries at N*

Eating our sandwiches at the fancy zephyr lodge watching the snow flurries start.

Northstar...

...was uncomfortably icy today.

We need some snow.

twins tent city

Current demands: unlimited hot chocolate, snow that sticks to the ground, and colored goldfish snacks. They would also be open to negotiatiations for a horsey and a cow - perhaps at nonnies house...

A wind scoured day at Heavenly

It was icy skiing today, much like Vermont.

The highlight was seeing the medevac chopper land and take off from the Sky lodge. We were glad not to be getting a ride!

Tomorrow we go to the north shore.

A pictorial map of where we skiied on Jan 17

I found this in my files, as I had forgotten to upload it last month.  Most modern phones now are tracking your location, and you can up the frequency of locates (if you want) which is is interesting when you are traveling / biking etc.

The MyTracks application is even more powerful.  The above is just what the phone keeps track on its own, without you doing much (other than turning on MyTracks in this instance).

Law Enforcement will find this good way to track people.

Busy little ranch helpers!

The girls got to watch the ranchers work the cattle today, which made them hungry for a snack. They also got to feed the horses a snack of carrots, which made them thirsty for hot chocolate. Lots of animals and lots of food. Perfect vacation.

Tahoe

The Ranch!

The twins are having a great time on their godparents ranch. Today they saw cows, chickens, horses, and tractors!

Gingerbread Haus

The twins decorated their gingerbread house today, and amazingly enough, followed instructions to NOT eat all the icing and candies that get glued on to the house. Much of the sprinkles were spilled all over the floor, so cleaning up was a mess. Not as impressive as my sister's gingerbread creation. Click on the picture to see a full slideshow.

I'm making some bolognese sauce in the slow cooker, so the whole house smells like tomatoes and fennel.

New Years Day at the Park

To start the New Year off right, we took the girls to the park to play on the jungle gym. They had a great time and met some other kids there as well. Now they are napping after clambering all over the park for an hour.

I forgot the memory chip for the camera, so I used my HTC phone to take these pictures, which were then wirelessly synced to PicasaWeb, and then resynced back to my computer for editing. It's clunky that way, but it sort of gets the job done. Even though it's another gadget to carry around, I much prefer my Canon S90 for taking pictures -- it's compact and produces high quality images.

Click on the picture above for a slideshow.

Nostalgia for Moses baskets

The girls have become a bit crazy for their Moses baskets again over the last week. They have done this quite a few times. I showed them the picture we have of the two of them, swaddled, sharing one basket, and that is what seemed to start the current craze. They barely fit...

Happy New Year.