Belated Valentines!

Here in the King family we do things different.  Holidays are nice and everything but pretty pricey at times.  Holidays are a good chance to relax and have a little fun in the spirit of whatever holiday it is, but does it have to be when the nation has it?  Our answer is No!  Sommer and I decided to do "Belated Holidays" (copyright 2010).  We celebrate most holidays a week late in order to save a little money and have a little extra fun, such was the case with this Valentines Day.

We woke up early...by we I guess I mean Sommer woke up early or at least earlier than me and made some shweet breakfast.  We both got our snowboard gear ready and headed to the hills.  We got to go to the Canyons on a perfect day, not just because it was Belated Valentines Day but because it was snowing a bunch!

Side note...We were talking about how dumb our kids are going to look in school when they don't hand out Valentines Day cards on Valentines Day.  Oh well, that's their problem!

So we got to the Canyons and loaded up on their little open air gondola that takes you from parking up to the base of the mountain.  That was pretty fun and different but it made parking a lot easier since it was a huge lot at the very bottom of their mountain.  Once we made it to the resort we got to take an actual gondola up the mountain.  As we got to the top we began to realize how BIG the Canyons actually is.  We had heard that it was the biggest resort in Utah but hadn't thought about what that actually meant.  I think there are 5 different mountains that you can ski on.  We ended up riding each mountain and experiencing the entire resort.  We spent all day boarding and had a blast!  Only a few minor owies were incurred, all on my part.  We arrived at the Canyons just after opening (about 9am) and left at closing (4pm).  We were beat, or at least I was!

Here is the trail map.  The Canyons is just huuuge

Here are a bunch of fun pics we took!

On our drive to the Canyons.  We took the Jeep because we were planning to get another piece of furniture on the way home.  By the way, check out Sommer's site.  She's been designing some new fun stuff!

Sommer's all about the Thug life, so then I made her take a happy picture.

Here we are on our way up the gondola.  It was real fun and got pretty high up in the air as it crossed a couple deep canyons between two mountains.  We were packed in with 6 other people and they all got to witness Sommer having me put her gloves on.  They all felt sorry for me...not really.

Take your pick of which one you like, I didn't know so I put all 3 on.  This is at the top of the canyons.  We had to take 2 gondolas and 3 lifts to make it to the highest point.  

So this is one accident I had... At the Canyons there are a lot of houses on the actual mountain.  So there are roads going to them and it weaves through and around the actual ski runs.  Bridges and tunnels were made to accommodate the cars.  One spot they made a giant wall so people wouldn't accidentally ride into a road.  Well this wall was at least 35 feet tall and it was sloped.  All i saw was HUGE QUARTER PIPE.  I got loads of speed and went for it.  This wall was not meant to be a quarter pipe and I soon learned why.  It slopes up at a dramatic rate, too hard and abrupt to be a good quarter pipe.  So with all the speed I had I made it to the top of the wall...just not standing.  The angle took out my knee and I slid to the top.  Once at the bottom I sat for a while til Sommer caught up and I soaked up the "are you hurts".  Here we are 5 minutes after all that.  Luckily it wasn't bad enough to keep me off my board for more than that!

Some of the scenery.  Sommer likes these white (seemingly brown in the pic) trees.  Not the pines.  Remember these trees because it will come up later....

Here we are at lunch!

Here is Sommer learnin to butter, or manual.

We found some nearly untouched back country and had some good fun through the trees.  We sniped us some good pow.  This is Sommer.

Below is me!

Guess what!  We're married!  This was while I was on the ground after THE WALL.  Injury = kiss...i should get hurt more often, or at least start faking them.

More back country shtuff, thats me by the way.  In my new coat with my new pants and my sweet goggles that Sommer found for me.  That's a whole different story (the goggles being lost) that I will leave for Sommer to tell.  I think she will make it a lot more fun sounding, she has a good imagination!

Even down in Park City it was snowing where we parked!  Here we are leaving at the end of the day, 4pm.

End of Snowboarding

...

Start of craftiness!  yay!

So after a fun day of boarding I took Sommer to a place called Color Me Mine.  This is a store I have never had any real desire to go to...ever.  Here is a link to their site.  It is a crafty store.  I knew Sommer would love it.  You buy a ceramic mug or something and paint it, they then glaze it and there you go!  We got a pitcher and painted it.  It was a lot of fun for her.  I tried to help but she would only let me do the base coats...something I couldnt screw up on.  Its like coloring inside the lines but easier!!

So the trees i had you remember...they are on the pitcher!  Sommer liked them a lot.

We had fun, she had more fun.  I was patient and helped clean up n get more paint and stuff.  Yay for belated holidays!

Pro's at work

I sold my first Vintage BlueBird piece of furniture today! Well at least we hope so. She is supposed to come tomorrow to pick it up. 

Chris has been helping me scout Craiglist for cheap and promising furniture, since here a the vintage bluebird we only deal with quality pieces that have character and class. This table was given to us by a lady trying to get rid of a lot of furniture, it was in sorrowful shape, until it found its way into our skilled hands.

Here is the table getting its first coat on. It was in really bad shape. You should have seen it before, I can't believe we didn't get pictures.

This chair is still available, my husband is not... even though he's got his model moves going.

This is what it looked like before... pretty good huh?

Check us out at TheVintageBlueBird.Blogspot.com

My Loving Husband

... eats all the red and pink Mike and Ikes

Midnight Snow Shoeing

Last Friday we went on a night snowshoe hike. The moon was full and apparently very close to Earth, called the "Perigee Moon" I guess. But anyhow it was very fun. Chris Strapped on all 4 snowshoes to his backpack and we hiked from our house to the start of the trail. (it turned out to be a pretty steep climb, our roads were not exactly built to code grade or width).

Once we got to the trail we strapped on our snowshoes. We were surprised the entire time how bright it was, as long as you weren't behind the trees. The trail started out really easy. We didn't even need snowshoes... but we were glad we had them later on.

There was a lot of fresh snow from the week before, and it sparkled the entire time. We only brought 1 water bottle and we finished it off in the first 1/2 hour (we need to learn some survival skills). We left some water in the bottom and stuffed it full of snow hoping to make more water. We tried to get water from the slush the rest of the time. It wasn't the best idea we've ever had.

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When we started we were on a mini cat-track.But as we kept going we got on steeper, less trodden on, and more crooked. We had to take a few breaks on our way up. We came to an opening where there was this weird pipe sticking up on top of a hill. So naturally we took a picture by it.

I started getting really nervous, because I thought that I was hearing yips and barks (there are plenty of wildlife around). This is where I realized that it was one of my squeaky snowshoes was making all the noise.

We finally thought we reached the top after about 2 hours of climbing. We found ourselves on the top of the ridge. We followed some cross country ski tracks across the ridge, and fighting trees and brambles (Chris lost to the snags only once).

We had finally reached the top. But we didn't really feel like climbing all the way around the way we came. So we looked over the steep edge where a few snowboard tracks were, and started jumping, leaping, sliding and falling down through the deep snow. Only took us 25 minutes to reach the road that way. Then we took off our shoes, and slowly walked home. 

It was so much fun.