Christmas 2006 - Part 2

Today was fun! Chris and I woke up and were pretty much met with breakfast made by Scott and Mom. Dad and Kjirsten were out getting "produce." The past few days, Steamboat Springs was cut off from deliveries from Denver, b/c of the storm. So the stores were bare, with no food! Dad had visited Wal-Mart the day we arrived, and the checkout kid didn't know what produce even meant. Needless to say, they didn't have any.

So, soon after K and Dad got back, Dad, Scott, Mom, Chris and I headed out snowshoeing to find ourselves a Christmas tree! Kjirsten and Zach stayed back for naptime. We had to drive into Routt National Forest in order to legally cut ourselves a tree. We headed up the mountain, to Rabbit Ears Pass, and the higher we got, the harder it snowed. It was beautiful! We found a place to pull over, parked, and started the ordeal of trying to put on our snowshoes... Finally, we were ready, and we set out.

The high altitude (guessing 9000 feet) made for a lot of heavy breathing, and semi-frequent breaks, but the snowshoing was so fun!! With snowshoes on, we still sunk down about 30 inches. We're guessing that without the snowshoes the snow was at least 4-5 feet deep! Scott was the only member of our party who had ever snowshoed before, so it was a new experience for most of our group. Well, Dad had snowshoed with tennis rackets on his feet when he was a kid - we're not counting that as actual snowshoeing... It was almost a surreal experience! I don't know how to describe it. We snowshoed into the wilderness, it seemed like, though we probably didn't get much further than a quarter mile from the road. But it seemed like we were the only ones in the world!

We found three possible trees - and we ultimately settled on the one closest to the road - I think the idea of dragging/carrying a heavy tree farther than necessary was not the most appealing of thoughts. But, the one we chose was the best of the three, so it was a lucky choice. Chris and Scott took a turn sawing the tree, Dad helped break it off, we tagged it (just like a deer!), and we started back. Dad and Scott carried it all the way. Mom, Chris and I headed back after them (taking a few breaks on the uphill climb), and then we slid down a big hill on our butts! I got quite a bit of snow up my shirt and down my pants, but it was fun!

When we got back, we had a little lunch, watched Zach play in the snow and started working on our homemade ornaments again. We had decorate our tree, you know! Kjirsten strung the tree with lights, and we added our ornaments as we finished them. Looks pretty good!

Tonight we're having fondue for dinner (it's kind of become our Christmas Eve tradition). Not sure what our plans are for tomorrow, but I'm sure Santa will come tonight, and we'll be watching littly Zachy open presents in the morning!

Merry Christmas!!