Christmas

This was the first year since moving to Seattle that we didn't go back to Minnesota for Christmas. Instead, my parents came here. We enjoyed beautiful weather (sunny & in the low 50s), a fantastic day of crowd-free skiing on Christmas day, and a fun party with some of my parents' long-time friends.

Taking pictures wasn't the focus of the weekend, so the selection you'll find in the album is fairly small.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Snow Hiking

Going skiing wasn't in the cards this weekend, but we did manage to get out for a little hike in the snow. We drove to Alpental, a ski area about 45 minutes from Seattle at Snoqualmie Pass. They've already had a couple hundred inches of snow this year, and it was fun to trudge through it and enjoy a very wintry scene.

This was our dog Oliver's first real experience in the snow (with us at least), and he seemed to enjoy it a lot. The pictures are here.

December update

It's been a busy first half of December. Seattle endured a bitterly cold streak, with high temps only in the 20's for almost a week. Skiing conditions degraded to hardpack and we haven't been up to the mountains yet this month. It's been snowing the last few days, though, so this weekend looks promising. We'll try to take some pictures and get something up soon...

We've been keeping very busy with a variety of things. We took a fun day trip to Vancouver, which is a cool city to walk around in. Although it's only about half of Seattle's size, it is in many ways a more cosmopolitan and diverse city than Seattle (something like 52% of it's residents are not native English-speakers). They're preparing to host the Winter Olympics in a few weeks, something which was pretty evident.

Ski season underway

Last weekend we went skiing for the first time of the year. It's a pretty dramatic switch from Hawaii, but it wasn't unpleasant. It's been a very snowy November in the Northwest; most resorts have opened weeks earlier than usual.

We didn't take any pictures, but it was great to get up into the mountains and out on the snow again. Hopefully November is a harbinger of great things to come this season...