February: Walking the Line's 50th post!

Hey!  We made it to 50.  I can't say the blog is going strong, but it's still going!  February brought us a little more snow than January, but I think we're still on track to have one of the worst year's for snow on record.  Trying to post monthly is at least helping me capture the little things going on each month.  My dad's extended family has had a monthly family newsletter for years and lately they have been encouraging those of us from our generation to contribute.  I like to think that keeping the blog updated on a monthly basis counts as my contribution. :)  February wasn't too exciting.  Drew passed his exam to become an official professional ski instructor.  He learned a lot of good techniques for himself.  It even helped me out a little since I went skiing TWICE this month.  If you don't know, I never ever skied before I met Drew.  Our first day of Drew teaching me to ski started out with a lot of laughs (which I think you can still see videos of on my Facebook page) but ended with Drew's first introduction to my hotheadedness (not featured on Facebook but you can bet it's one of Drew's favorite stories to tell people about me.)  Luckily, he stuck with me despite my flaws and inability to ski, and every year since I've gone skiing exactly one time a season.  It usually coincides with Drew's birthday as his birthday wish is always, "I want to go skiing with you."  This is enough of a guilt trip to get me back on the hill, vowing again to not lose my temper and make his birthday any worse than just having to wait for me to get down the bunny hill over and over again all day. Unfortunately, I don't have enough self control to stop myself and most of his birthday ski day memories include that time I impaled him with a ski pole/threw a ski/yelled profanities at a well meaning skier passing by/threatened to throw myself off the chairlift/etc. Every year it gets a little better, and last year I could actually say I had fun for most of it.  So this year Drew took it a step further and bought me my own set of skis. We actually had a pretty great time when we went, and I decided to go a second time the next week.  Drew skied mostly with Rich, and I just stayed on Chair 3 and tried a chair 4 run at the end with Drew.  I skied for like 6 hours and had a great time, once I figured out how to get my skis on.  I'm hoping to go out a few more times this year, but I've been so busy it's been hard to commit a full day to using a ski pass and getting on the mountain again.

For Valentine's Day I knit Drew another custom handle mitt for his cast iron and Drew made me this awesome white chocolate/peanut butter frosting cake inspired by my favorite candy: 

Delicious..but super rich!

I've also been a more social cross country skier this month and went out a few times with friends.  I am excited because even Drew decided, without my even pushing him, to get his own pair of classic skis.  Maybe we'll even go together one day! My friend Sam also bought cross country ski's this year and we got Drew to take her older kid downhill skiing while we took the younger one out in Moose Meadows.  It was beautiful, and Sam rocked it.  It's got to be so much harder with a little one on your back!

Have I mentioned that I love where I live?

I also had my spring concert with the Alaska Chamber Singers this month, which was all Johann Sebastian Bach.  It was good music, but it was a heavier concert for the boys to sit through.  I'm looking forward to resurrecting our fall concert program, Darwin Sings:  The Evolution of Choral Music, for our tour to Homer and Cooper Landing in April. Drew baked up some amazing snacks for my choir and for work.  He made peanut butter and chocolate cookies, as well as croissants, some stuffed with chocolate.  He's pretty amazing.

I also ran in the Frostbite Footrace during Fur Rondy this year.  It's only the 3rd race I've ever done and the other two I waited for over an hour just to start running.  So we were like 10 minutes late getting there for this one which I assumed would be no big deal.  Oh no, it had started already.  Which meant that I got to bust through the people on the sidewalk and start running right in front of the funny guy with the mike that gets paid to make smart alecky comments as all the runners come by.  You can bet he loved making fun of me. :)

At first I felt like a total loser cause I was being passed by EVERYONE and I was huffing and puffing.  I finally gave up and slowed my pace to something I could handle.  It was a loop course that you did twice.  When I came around to start my second lap while everyone I'd been with cruised to the finish line I realized I was running with all of those competitive athlete people.  I came around the corner and there were all of my people, jogging at a much more sane pace.  :)

I'm hoping to do 3 more races this year, so this was a good warm up one.  Next time I'll try and be on time for my start.  Hope you got through your February OK.  I guess it won't be too long before I'll be late for a posting in March...better late than never!

A Weird January...

We had a crazy January this year.  It got as warm as 55 degrees in Girdwood and almost all the snow melted.  That has inspired me to start winter running, and I've been at it pretty consistently three times a week.  I will usually just run with ice grippers on my shoes but by the end of our month and a half without snow I didn't even need those.  It was fun to get out and enjoy the sunshine and warmth, but I didn't feel like I'd really paid the price of a long winter to appreciate it as much as I normally do. We started out OK in October with this:

 Unfortunately it didn't last.  And then all the rain we got while it was warm really washed any snow we had away.  Drew took some pictures to remember our year it hardly snowed:

Needless to say we haven't exactly had to break out the snowblower much...

Usually the bike trail along this mountain is closed for avalanche danger.  It was wide open and ice free.  I even broke out my bike a few times.

One positive of all the warm sunny weather was that we had some beautiful clear days and nights.  We drove up the arm one night after we'd each spent the day outside (hence the clothes) just to take some pretty pictures at sunset:

Despite the lack of snow I did get in a cross country ski day or two early on, and Drew kept skiing the ice whenever the resort was open.  He took a professional ski instructor class this year so he is official now.  He's been having fun volunteering at the adaptive ski school and he found the classes really helped him with his own technique.

I love getting to spend a morning or a sunset afternoon cross country skiing here. I like to go alone, listening to classical music on my Ipod.  It's totally peaceful.

It's been really fun having our friends Tim and McKenzie here in Girdwood this year. (They own the dog we watched this summer, Wren.)

Gotta love the water view from the top of the resort.

What's New

Well we survived January.  It ended up being the 4th coldest January on record for Anchorage.  Glad we were here for it. :)  The average temperature last month was 2.5 degrees.  It's amazing how warm we were feeling yesterday when it was 21 degrees.   Positively balmy.  We also were getting 5 inches of snow an hour.   Drew took advantage of it and went skiing of course.  He's decided it's time to buy a pair of fat skis though.  When I heard he hit a hard spot of snow with his skis and flew off them and down the hill yesterday I was all about it too.  Luckily he seems to have just got the wind knocked out of him, bit his tongue pretty hard, and had some soft tissue damage.  He should heal up just fine.

In my world Drew convinced me I needed to get rid of a bunch of clothes I don't wear.  So I did, but then we realized that about 90% of the clothes that I do where are black, grey, white, or off white.  Drew says if he ever sees a girl with a creamy coat he just automatically assumes it is me. (Maybe that's cause I own like, 4 of them??)  I don't really know how this happened, but at some point I just stopped buying anything with color.  So he decided we should go shopping together and get me some clothes that I liked and that weren't  neutrals.  We only had time for one store today but we did pretty good, 4 new sweaters and 1 pretty top for 67 dollars.  Yay for sales!  And only one sweater isn't a color...(come on, everyone needs a grey cardigan!)

What else?  We braved the cold last weekend and went out snowshoeing again.  We are finding that people don't do the summer trails in the winter here.   At least not often it seems.  Both times we have gone we have gotten really lost following moose tracks instead of the trail.  It's really hard to stay on a trail that you can't see at all though.  So we had some fun getting lost, seeing the moose we must have been following, and generally freezing my hands off.  I think it was -4 that day.  Sunny, but my hands couldn't stay warm.  So I upgraded gloves this month.  Hopefully mittens will do the trick.

Drew has been working lots on the motorcycle.  I think he is learning a lot.  Last year in Utah we had a major oil leak on our car that he tried to fix and failed miserably at.  This year we have the same leak...and he's going to try and fix it again.  He has a little more knowledge and a lot more tools this year, so I'm hoping he can do it.  We've got to keep our little '97 Camry going!

I've been working out "a lot." (A lot for me, that is.) I got a little pass to go to a gym in Anchorage for 3 months from Groupon.  It has been good to workout and I have been trying to eat a little bit better diet.  Drew only buys me one box of cereal a week and believe it or not I can actually make it last all week.  (If you know me at all you probably think hell must have just frozen over...)  It's been good too.  I am back to weighing what I weighed when we got married and I was doing P90X.  And it just feels better to take good care of my body.

The sun is back.  It's still more of a winter darkness, but it's not noticeably darker here than I feel like it would be if we were in the lower 48.  I don't stagger out of my apartment in the middle of the day when I have been sleeping after working all night, just to stand in the freezing cold and feel the sun on my face for a few minutes.   That's no longer necessary.  So I feel like the worst is behind us!

How's your winter going?