Sunday, February 13, 2011

Moonshine Mountain

I heard about Moonshine Mountain from a colleague of mine, and decided to take a trip up there with the cadet girl scouts to try it out. Big Al, T-Rex and the rest of them loaded into two cars and we drove 2.5 hours up to snow tube.

As we got closer, and could see the mountains in the distance, we (I mean Big Al) noticed there was no snow. Nothing, but brown grass and sunshine. I called ahead to make sure we had something to do and they assured me they had plenty of snow.
We drive up to this.....um.....rustic, quaint little place with dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs and a plane crashed on top of shipping containers and knew we had arrived. They were the ONLY place around with snow - because they make a lot of it.

They had 3 dedicated runs and a tow rope if you didn't mind waiting. Our girls realized after one tow rope ride that it was much quicker to hike the icy stairs up the hill because MANY more runs could be made before your two hour time limit ran out. This is all of my girl scouts on the tow rope. The steps line is on the right.

The craziest thing happened on our first run. None of us had done this before, but we were going to do a "train." The first person holds on to the ankles of the second, and the 2nd holds on to the ankles of the third, etc. One of the safety guys at the top asked if he could catch a ride down with us..... um.....sure, but you don't have a tube. He told us no problem, and put one foot on my tube, and another on T-Rex's and then bent over and held on to one of the handles on my tube, then he "surfed" us down the hill. I kept waiting for him to fall - on me, on T-Rex, on his butt on the icy run, but he was amazing enough to do it. At one point the girls took a break (we had layered too much and were burning up), and sang karaoke - because every good tubing place needs entertainment.... right?


But most of the afternoon looked like this (they are at the top of the middle run):


The above picture is the straw area/hill that slows you down. In the last run the girls went WAY up the hill and then collided into another group coming down.

p>

A super fun day with the older girls. Can't wait to take them all next year.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Nine

Saturday, Blondie turned nine. It was a tremendously busy day though, starting with cousin CJ's birthday party at the Marionette Theater. Lots of Aunts and Uncles were on hand to celebrate as well as CJ's friends. I love spending time with my extended family, they make everything special (they drove 2 hours to help their 3 year old niece celebrate, I find that wonderful!).
After Blondie and Cheesie watched the show, we raced back home to meet the friends coming to our house to celebrate with Blondie. She simply wanted cake, snacks, and time to play with friends, and maybe have a dance party like the older girls have done - and that is exactly what they did.


Later that evening my sister, niece and mom came over to eat dinner, and have our family celebration. More presents, more silliness (make me laugh with cousin Cate) and playing puppets.


Puppets from the Marionette Theater, a fort making kit, money, clothes and some CD's made for some great family gifts.


Make me laugh......



When it came time for cake, who knew that Daddy had trick candles...... this is what that looked like:




Six glorious years seizure free was also celebrated the Monday before. Both of them mean the same thing to me though....... I got to keep my daughter.