Yes, I know I still need to write about Portland and Tacoma :)

It's been a different kind of great day. The last week in Chewelah was great, relaxing and done too soon. We rested, skiied and hiked and slept in, and it was glorious. And today, on our last day, we left at 10:30 and found, by glorious chance, "The Elk Plublic House', where Stefanie works, and they served us Anderson Valley Brewing Company Winter Solstice on tap. We've been looking for that very thing all trip! Wonderful fantasmacisims, it was great! But I'm jumping ahead. Chewelah. We got in on a Tuesday night after driving over from the coast and swinging far to the south of Washington to have dinner with my aunt and cousin in Kennewick. We were exhausted and did little that night but sleep. Time went too fast, so I can't give you a detailed play by play of our time there. But I can highlight the highlights. Mom and Fritz took the kids outside every day. Serious highlight here. They got up with the kids ever morning and took them outside to let them play and wear them out.


On Easter, our last full day there, Kristen and I took the kids on a walk down to the meadow and then into my favorite part of our property, down in the - holy cow, we're now in montana! - meadow there's a grove of cedar and aspen trees on the edge of the pine woods with an old logging trail going through them that creates a little clearing. By the time we got down the hill into the meadow Kate decided she was done and sat in the middle of the meadow crying and refusing to walk. By the time Jack, Kristen and I got to the edge of the woods though she rethought her position and got up and ran toward us. We had a great time exploring the forest with us and part way up the trail we stopped and just sat on the forest floor and played with anything we found. Earlier in the day, after church, we had walked onto the neighboring land to an over look, which had been my favorite reading/alone/thinking spot growing up. It's funny, because I look back on my time growing up and think 'I was always so social', but then I realize, I spent so much time alone just because I lived in the middle of the woods. I miss that balance.

On Friday of last week we went skiing. Strangely, the whole timing of our trip revolved around this one opportunity to go skiing during free ski week at 49 Degrees North, our local hill. We got up there around 9 am, rented skis and set off for the bunny hill on chair 3 (don't be fooled, it was a bunny hill, but it had an actual lift to the top, not one of those bitty tow rope bunny hills). Unfortunately, it was a little too late by the time we realized that my shoty out of touch ski skills were supposed to be the basis of Kristen's into to skiing. It took her about an hour to get down what would normally take me about 5 minutes. I didn't really know what to teach her, so I just said, 'hey, go side to side and use weight in your heels to stop', when apparently, the proper instruction would have been, 'make your skis look like pizza to go slow, and french fries to go fast'. Whoops. As we wandered back into the rental shop to exchange her skis for a board we ran into Josh King, an old... um, I don't know. We were in band together for 6 years, and he was a musician I'd always looked up to, but I can't say that 'friends' would be the right term. He was someone I spent a lot of time with. We had a mutual (?) respect for the other's musicianship and were constantly around each other because of it. Matt, his brother, who was in my grade, was there also, and we spent a few minutes catching up, and then another 20 minutes or so chatting up Josh and his very - I don't know how to describe it - mature, adult-like, well mannered - son, I couldn't believe he was 7, he was so socially aware and respectful. It always gives me new respect for people who can raise kids like that.

We took the bunny hill a few more times with ease after switching out Kristen's skis and then rode up chair one for a top to bottom run. I hadn't been up on the hill for years and ended up taking us down a run that only let us go about halfway down and then making you take a lift back to the top. Unfortunately, on the way down that run I took a spill, it wasn't bad, but when I got up, I saw Kristen laying on the ground about 30 feet beyond me, I skied down to her and a few other skiers were gathered around her asking if she was okay. I'd missed her spill, but she described it as realizing she was about to crash and then doing a one eighty so that her face wouldn't take the brunt of the fall. She said she remembers her air time being a little too long before the mountain rose up and hit her. She was pretty dazed, but able to get up and ski down. But, like I said, the trail didn't go all the way down to the lodge, so we got some assistance from the ski patrol to the top of the hill so we could find our way back down. While I regret to inform you that I have no media proof of this, Kristen got a ride down on the back of a medic tobbagan skied by a guy named Steve. I followed them down. In the words of Kristen, "What a hoss.". The wind was biting and it was nearly blizzard like conditions, so I took it a little slower. When I got home my face was wind-burnt and my knees didn't work quite like they should've. Kristen was none the worse for wear except for a head ache that lasted her a few days. Still glad we went, I probably won't be able to go again for a few years.

On Saturday, I drove down to Spokane with my mom and the kids to see a friend of mine I've done a superbly mediocre job of keeping in touch with. Stefanie was a girl I'd met my senior year of high school. I'd done a crappy job of getting my science credits in, so to graduate I had to go back to Freshman science to get the easiest credits possible to graduate, and while there I ridiculed our teacher (fear not, he was one of those that definitely hated children) mercilessly together. Also, during that year we were in a few plays/musicals together. Anyways, I seem to keep missing her, and as I've done a poor job of keeping in touch with anyone from high school, she got the short end of an already short stick. It was great to see her though, and to reconnect and find common ground again as adults. That night Kristen and I met up with two of my girlfriends from high school and ad a few pints at -the- bar in Chewelah while catching up.

Other than that, it was a week of just relaxing. And it was heaven. The scenery was beautiful, the company was great, the weather kept going from sunny to a light hail to snow and the only dull moments were great ones.