Snowshoeing

Mark & I love snowshoeing, and we don't do it nearly often enough. However, if I were to picture a perfect snowshoeing day...it would look like this picture. In the mountains. Sunny. Crisp enough to keep you cool under all those layers while exercising. Lots of powdery snow...just crystallized enough to shimmer and sparkle back at me from under my snowshoes. Aaaah. And guess what? That's just what we got last week! We planned to take the boys and go shoeing on New Year's Eve with Mark's parents & then just crossed our fingers for good weather. It was gorgeous.

We headed to a place up Little Cottonwood Canyon that we've been to a couple of times. In fact, here is a link to a post from almost a year & 1/2 ago when we took the boys on a hike & picnic there! Anyway, here we are getting started at the trail head.

This is just a really quick clip, but I had to include it. Not only because it's cute to watch Noah walk in snowshoes, but because of what Noah says. He said "Fires of London!..." (quote taken from Fireman Sam) It's just so funny to hear that come out of a 3 year old American kid's mouth:


Mark with Linc on his back. Lincoln had a huge smile on his face, but wasn't willing to give up his binky at the moment.

Not too far into our excursion is a bridge that is a beautiful place to take pictures. Here are Mark's parents. Aren't they fun & sporty grandparents?...and a handsome couple too, of course!

And our little family of four! Oh, how I love my boys.

A little way into the hike we decided to head out into the meadow (where we'd previously had a picnic). It was fun to walk out into some untouched powder. Things were a tad slow-moving since Noah was walking on snowshoes himself...but watching him with poles and shoes was the highlight of the event for me. Anyway! While out in the meadow Mont fell backwards into the snow, and Noah quickly followed suit...

Of course Noah enjoyed munching on snow. He loves the snow, and he particularly loves eating the snow (check out this post from 2 years ago).

I liked this shot because you can kind of get an idea of Noah handling his poles - so cute.


Me & Noah.

A nice lady (from Russia we found out) was passing our group as we were headed back to the car, and she stopped to ask if she could take a picture of all of us together. How nice, huh? Oh, and (click on the picture to enlarge it) check out Noah's expression in this photo. He insisted on holding his pole up like that and making that face for the picture.

Earlier when we'd taken pictures on the bridge, Mark & I took our sunglasses off for the photo. Afterward, I couldn't find mine and realized that they must have fallen out of my pocket. We looked all around (including in the river below) and couldn't see them. However! On our way back we checked again...and this time Mark spotted them in the river! So, he and his dad fastened poles together, and then fastened a bungee cord (that has a metal hook) to the end...and they were eventually able to fish my glasses out of the river!!! Wahoo - I was really happy about that!

At the end of our trip we let Lincoln out of the backpack to run around for a few minutes. This is what he thought about that:

Me with my sweetheart.
On the drive home both boys fell asleep. Then, Mont & Mary picked up some really yummy soup for us at Zuppas for dinner! Mark got called into work for a bit, but we were able to get away to go see a movie (a HUGE thanks to Mark's parents for watching the boys so we could go)! We saw Avatar (I loved it). What a perfect day to end the year. Thanks for everything, Mont & Mary!