Keeping Busy

Hi friends – sorry it’s been so long (again) since an update… I know it’s totally cliche’, but life really does get in the way. And of course, since Howdy is home so much more now, I like to spend my evenings and weekends with him and away from my computer.

This winter in Alaska has been unusual – we’ve had record snow fall (it had snowed over 81″  as of a couple of weeks ago and we’ve had more snow since then!); Almost every day for a month we’ve had temps below zero, usually double-digits into the negatives, which is a lot colder than last year. But I’m loving the weather despite that, because it means the snow is sticking around and piled on everything, the trees are all white and frozen, and it’s just beautiful.

We’ve been doing a lot of skiing too - I think this past weekend was the first weekend we haven’t gone skiing since Christmas! Howdy is getting into skiing too, and even skied on the blues the last time we went! This is huge since it was only his 3rd time skiing since he learned to ski for the first time last March, and he did so great! I was super impressed with him!

It was -11*F at midway and the base all day the last time we went (MLK day), but we were out there for nearly 5 hours anyway. The last 2 times we’ve gone skiing it hasn’t gotten above zero (the previous time it was -6*F the whole day), but aside from the cold, the weather and conditions were fantastic. It was actually about 10* warmer at the top of the mountain, because there was a cloud layer hanging just above the middle of the mountain.

View from the top:

I’m really enjoying getting back into skiing. Howdy and I bought skis and all our equipment during the off-season, and I couldn’t be happier with that decision. I love all of my stuff, and it’s more than paid for itself in what the rentals would have cost us by now if we hadn’t bought it.

We have such a great time skiing with our friends too, and I am so thankful to have such awesome people here in Alaska with us!

We’ve also gone tubing on base a couple more times! Again, it’s been cold, but so fun!

…Well, that’s a lot of what we’ve been up to lately. There are still quite a few more things to mention, but that’ll have to be another post. Howdy has a trip coming up, so while I will miss him, it’s always a good thing for my blog posting frequency.

Hope you all are having a fantastic week – and thanks for bearing with me during my blog laziness!