Being a PNW kid means knowing how to ski! Scott and I want to get the kids comfortable on skis while they are young but haven't been able to commit to weekly ski lessons mainly because it's such a big time commitment. Since we had MLK day off, we figured it would be a good weekend to drive a bit further out and try Mission Ridge, a new-to-us ski hill where the girls could take a few lessons over the course of the weekend. Unfortunately, the kids classes were super booked and we only got the girls in 1 class each, but I think it was still a good trip!
Evie's taken a few classes in the past but finally got on a chair this time. She was loving it so much that after her morning lesson, Scott took her up a few more times and even got her to do a blue run! I"m so proud of her - I don't think *I* have even done a blue run before!
Nora hit a milestone too - she tried out the tow rope for the first time. That thing is super tricky and everyone was falling all over the place because they couldn't hold on. But, she said she cried only a little and was a trooper doing her little pizza wedges to come down the bunny hill.
Do you see Nora straight ahead?
Trying out the skis
Cute ski-bunny
Evie loved skiing with Daddy
Daddy loves that his girls are skiing!
We spent the night at a nearby hotel and then broke up the ~2.5 hr drive home with a snowshoe hike. We were very close to the epic snoeshoe trip we did last year on the way home from Leavenworth that the girls still rave about. We tried a different trail and this time, we were able to walk a lot further and had a lot of fun building a fort and having a snowball fight (girls vs boy) when we stopped at an open field.
Goodness, it's already 2025! It's been a really long time since we posted! We had a very lazy new year. We flew back from LA on the evening of the 31st so spent the last remaining hours of 2024 cozying up on the couch and then fell asleep before it even hit midnight! On New Years day, we slept in, cleaned up the house and then did a quick hike the next day. All in all, a good start to the year! Nora's new blanket hoodie. Cold and muddy trails. We're not in LA anymore! We hiked the Primrose trail that follows Coal Creek.
We took Nora to her one week check up today and guess what? We have a porker on our hands! She weighed in at a whopping 6 lbs. 5.5 oz. That's 2.5 oz more than her birth weight! They want the baby to be back at birth weight within 2 weeks so she beat that milestone pretty handily. Hooray! So far, she's been better than Evie at eating (she doesn't take nearly as long, although she falls asleep VERY often) but she's not as good as Evie at pooping. Poor thing always seems to have tummy issues - she's very squirmy and fussy when she doesn't burp or poop. The doc doesn't think it's a big problem though since she still has lots of wet diapers, but we'll have to keep a better eye on it now. We'll have another doctor check up (with shots!) next week.
The other weekend, Scott arranged for us to get a private tour of the Salmon hatchery on Orcas Island. It's surprising that we've been going to Orcas for over 10 years now and never noticed this place before! The tour started down by the waters along Eastsound where Mike, the facilities manager, showed us where the Salmon come in from the ocean ever year. There is a fish ladder down there and a little dock that lets them catch the spawning salmon and they can quickly fertilize the eggs. Then we drove up to the main hatchery where he walked us through where the eggs incubate until they are little hatchlings before being moved to larger swimming pools. It was an interesting little tour to learn all about the life of the salmon. This hatchery focuses on Chinook (King) salmon, and out of the 800,000 baby salmon they release back to the water, about 800-900 come back to spawn. The rest are eaten up by whales in the Pacific ocean or caught by commercial fisherman out in the open w...
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