Sun Valley Feb 2011

Clark's comments in Winter Green.

Back in February, Clark and I ventured out West again, leaving behind a lovely spring-like weekend to play in the snowy mountains of western Idaho.  It was a lot of traveling (an hour to Greensboro, many hours in planes, and an hour to Provo, followed by a 5 hour drive to Sun Valley), but it's always a great weekend full of quality family time and snow.  We filled the weekend with skiing (downhill & cross-country), swimming, feeding the ducks, bowling, playing games, etc.  

This year we also had some interesting kinks in our weekend plans, like my parents having to travel back down to Utah for a funeral, getting a phone call from the main desk saying that we were scheduled to checkout a day earlier than we had planned and that people were waiting to get into our condo, and having to pack up and move condos 24 hours before packing up for home!  Memorable, indeed!

Our first full day was a ski day.  I spent most of the day skiing fantastic powder with my dad, while the boys and Rachel skied hills too steep for a pregnant lady!  (Let's be honest, I don't ski black diamonds anyway).  After lunch, I joined up with Clark, Jerai and Beth and skied the rest of the afternoon on Dollar Mountain.  Don't be fooled by the name Dollar Mountain.  You might want to think that Dollar implies a low monetary value equal to the low grade hills and low level of danger involved when the exact opposite is true.  Dollar Mountain is actually named for all the dollars the ski lodge has lost after being mitigated due to its high level of danger.  Only the best and most skilled skiers can handle dollar mountain.

Jerai snapped this shot from the lift of Clark and I styling down the mountain.   It's too bad Jerai didn't continue to take shots of us, because this was just seconds before I landed a front flip 360.  It was epic.

Jerai, Beth and Clark on the ski lift.

On day 2, Clark and I took a day off from skiing and spent the day playing around the lodge.  Clark had an all-star photo shoot.  I sure am attracted to this guy!  Amy is talking about that topless guy in the middle picture, not me.  But she manages to be a little attracted to me sometimes.  One thing we did learn from this photoshoot is that I make a fairly attractive lady.

This picture was particularly difficult to take, since Clark's arm could only reach so far around the wooden poles! 

Boyd's activities were rather limited due to his broken leg, but feeding the ducks always cheered him up.  Feeding the Ducks always cheered Boyd up, but it cheered down everyone else.  I think a skunk might have died in the duck pond.  I have not smelt such a smell in a long time.

Our last day a big group of us went cross-country skiing (skate style).  The scenery was breath-taking (I literally couldn't breath after about 100 yards), and the skiing sure provided us with plenty of exercise!

By the end of the trip, we knew Clark had pretty much had his fill of snow and snow-related activities, when he started wielding large icicles as weapons.  Stephen was fine.  After snapping out of my winter-induced psychosis, I performed a couple of rounds of CPR and Stephen came right to.  He was up and walking around just a few days later.

 And so ended another successful, though slightly different than previous years, Moulton Sun Valley trip.