Quick trip to Mammoth

We took another trip to Mammoth - this time making it a super short turn around. Up on Friday after work and back Sunday evening but definitely worth it! Can you believe that we spend about 12 hours in a car on a weekend to get in two days of riding? And we do this a couple of times a season? So worth it though!

The Infinite Dress

Even though Aaron contends that Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday, he still manages to sort out a way to treat me to something a little special to celebrate. This year, he bought me this gimmicky infinite dress - actually two, one in red and another in black. He didn't think that I would ever actually wear it, but he correctly guessed that I would have fun trying out all the combinations. And actually, I wore it out in public! Here I am wearing style #18 for Val & Muriz's wedding.

Salt Lake City

This weekend Aaron and I were in Salt Lake City for a ski trip. The ironic thing is that we realized that this is the very first ski trip we've ever taken just the two of us. How romantic! We flew out Friday late afternoon and arrived at our hotel in less time than it takes us to drive to Mammoth.

Our overall impression is that this place is great! We stayed in downtown Salt Lake, but the drive up to Park City is a quick 30 miles. Seriously, it couldn't be any easier. Everyone is super nice - not just the service industry folks who are hoping for a tip - everyone. The weather worked out great for us and we had fresh powder to play on all day.

As for Salt Lake being the Mormon mecca, we did a driving tour of Temple Square Saturday after riding all day. But other than that, the people we have interacted with have really been promoting the drinking and have downplayed the Mormon influence. Also, it's hilarious just how busy the state run liquor store is. We watched the parking lot from our hotel room and cracked up Friday night.

And yes, of course we started dreaming of buying rental property in Park City. The prices are 'reasonable' compared to Mammoth with a surprising number of places in an affordable six figure range. Of course there are loads of properties listed in the real estate book similarly priced to the multi-million dollar Silver Star development that we toured. Oh we can dream!

(photos to come)

Busy, busy weekend

This past weekend was super busy for Aaron and I. Friday night we had a family dinner to celebrate Grandpa Shel's birthday, Aaron's parent's anniversary, and Aaron's upcoming birthday. It was a last minute idea, so we tried to squeeze it in before a show at Molly Malone's that I had been wanting to go to. Turns out that dinner ran late so we missed the band that we wanted to see (Andrew Jed) but caught a little of this other band that turned out to be pretty good (Freeman) and had some time to chat with my friends that we were meeting up with.

Saturday morning we made waffles before planting the chocolate comsos that we had found at Costco the week prior. It's one of the flowers that we had in our wedding, so I'm really hoping they do well in our yard. We cleaned up in time to make it to Akemi Fu's first birthday party (I love this photo we captured when the bubble machine was turned on!) and then rushed home to make a turnaround to get to our friend Minh's More Cowbell show downtown.

We didn't stay super late downtown though since early Sunday morning I had another rowing race in Long Beach. This time we took out an 8 and there were 2 other boats in our category. We totally smoked them - which was a lot of fun! We were lame and didn't remember to charge our camera, which means no photos. Hopefully I'll have some from Gwen's boyfriend to share soon.

Since our team doesn't have many opportunities to row together, we had practice after the race back in Marina Del Rey. I was officially exhausted but when I got home I managed to do some laundry and clean up the kitchen before sleeping through the first half of the Super Bowl.