KaiserTales

Marissa and I were invited a while ago to join our friends Dave and Brianna at Dave’s mother’s house in Utah for a week of skiing between Christmas and New Years.  We flew in on the 26th and were picked by the both of them shortly after our flight arrived and we were off to explore the beautiful and mysterious Salt Lake City (more on that later).

After arriving at Dave’s Mom’s place we unpacked our bags and headed off to Target to buy a few extra gifts for Dave’s family. That evening we had the chance to celebrate Xmas with Dave’s two sisters, brother-in-law, boyfriend-in-law, Mother, and cat. We even played ping pong downstairs where I totally crushed all the competition (sorry Hon).

Our first ski excursion was out to Park City, where we had beautiful weather with a temperature of ZERO. A bit cold by Seattle standards, but with snow like this who can complain? In this photo Marissa, Dave and Brianna are nicely waiting on me as they cheerily show this old fart how to ski down the mountain in style without having a heart attack!

As I recall we started our first run on a double diamond run, which certainly set my expectations about my skill level a bit low. However, as the day progressed, both Marissa and I both really got into the zone and started skiing all the runs with some panache and skill.

Here is a great shot of Dave and Brianna (I don’t know what is wrong with the couple behind them)

As you can kind of see from this photo, the views were great and at times we could see for miles… After skiing till closing we headed off with Paul, who is an old friends of Dave’s for beers, beers and sushi. The second round of beers were hosted at Paul’s place where everyone got a chance to stretch their tired legs.

It is well known that white wine helps the healing process, and when combined with stretching (Brianna) leads to a full recovery. Speaking of that full recovery, we were all completely and totally exhausted the next day, so what did we do? We visited the Mormon temple of course!

This was my second trip to Temple Square, having been there quite some time ago with my family on one of our long road trips from Seattle to Texas. Somehow during that first trip I came into possession of the Book of Mormon and for some odd reason I was completely intent on reading the entire thing. I also remember my parents looking on perplexed from the front of the car. About 8 miles later and some 2-3 pages into it I gave it up.

Our visit yesterday brought up all these great memories. Like my first trip, we took the “tour” of the temple complex, which is a “tour” in name only as the tour guides sit you down and share their testimonials, and not much about the history of the complex, needless to say the architecture or anything else I find most fascinating.

Our second day of skiing was spent at Snowbird, which is only six or so miles from Dave’s old house. Talk about having a nice commute, I would have skipped all my classes, ditched all my friends and skied full time at Snowbird if I had grown up where he did. There was plenty of untracked fresh powder, lots of double diamond runs, and good skiing for all.

Here is a self portrait of Marissa and I all bundled up and with our protective gear on. We counted and it turns out that Marissa was wearing 6-7 layers. She reminded me of Randy Parker, the little brother from the movie A Christmas Story (you have to see the movie to find out why).

The top of Snowbird is at 11k feet, so we were a bit winded at times, but it was some of the best skiing I have ever seen. There is also a 600′ tunnel that takes you from one side of the mountain to the other!

A few quick action shots of us in the tunnel.

So here I write, three plus days into our trip, with two days of great skiing under our belts, a “tour” of the Mormon Temple with plenty of food consumed with old and new friends alike and about to head to bed a bit more sore than I was when I arrived (quite a bit)  and exhausted from having too much fun.

Oh wait…

I am never too excited to do the crazy dance…

Lastly, I want to thank Dave and Brianna for the chance to join them on their ski vacation. We are having a wonderful time with the both of them and their family.

This past weekend we took in our first ski day of the season. Actually, we took in our first and second days of the season, and both were absolutely fabulous.

We drove to the family cabin on Friday evening just as a snowstorm blew in (see my previous blog entry—this is another good example). We only left an hour behind schedule (but that’s what happens when work gets busy), and we still made decent time. But dammit Ken and Amanda for leaving a few minutes before us! Ken sent us a text just as we were leaving Ellensburg. He was at the gas station in Vantage, taking a rest stop and figuring out how to get to the cabin. Once Nate found out they were 20 minutes ahead of us, he hit the gas, sure that we could catch up with them.

Despite the fact that Nate thought every car we caught up to between Vantage and the cabin belonged to Ken, his Land Rover break lights greeted us when we pulled into the driveway. Amanda poured out of the seat, thrilled to have reached the destination alive. You can teach a southern girl to snowboard, but she’ll NEVER get comfortable driving in inclement weather!

John and Anne joined us shortly thereafter, and we settled into storytelling and drinking—favorite pastimes of cabin life. Things I didn’t know before the storytelling:

• Growing up in Marysville teaches you useful ghetto skills—like how to start a Honda after it’s been stolen and the ignition has been ripped out.
• There is a right and wrong way to flip someone off. Fifth and sixth graders know the right way. Seventy-year-old teachers know the wrong way. Thirty-year-old teachers know the right way and are able to instruct their older colleagues on this important skill.
• If there is any form of snow or ice fall in the south, nobody leaves home. It’s not really about the dangerous conditions of the roads, but about Bubba and his twin cab careening down the highway, spinning donuts and using little sedans as launching pads.
• Raising a puppy means that you have to do all kinds of gross things to its behind, or you can pay a trainer to do those gross things for $10.

This was über fun times, but we turned in early for EVEN BETTER TIMES ON THE SKI SLOPES. It takes approximately 1.25 hours to get from the cabin’s front door to the first chair at Mission Ridge. Life is good. Life is so good.

Nate’s convinced that I’m trying to kill him. And I’ve probably given him ample evidence of that fact, but I swear it’s not true.

It all started when I insisted that we put up the Christmas lights on the house. I’ve done it plenty of years in the past, and I even managed on my own one year (Nate nearly killed me himself for even attempting the feat) … But I digress …

Five years ago, I had a 6’10” boyfriend who was willing to help me hang lights. It was a perfect situation, given that it was my first year in the house, my neighbor had a tall ladder and I needed the extra foot-and-a-half more than my own height to help me get to the highest pitch. He owned his own business with flexible hours and was willing to let me instruct him one Wednesday afternoon on where to hammer in the nails and string lights across my rooftop. Thanks to said boyfriend’s height and hammering skills, I’ve been able to hang lights from little nails positioned across my rooftop ever since.

But this year, as Nate and I stood atop all sorts of precarious ledges to hang the first string of lights, we decided that the nails were no longer effective. It was time to break out the gutter hooks that have been kept in a box for the past two years. That meant going six inches further up and clipping gutter hooks to the very top of the roof line along the gutters. Nate’s 5’10” stature was lacking an entire foot compared to my previous light-hanging partner, and I SO missed those twelve additional inches! It would have made both our lives a little easier this year.

We struggled mightily as we took turns, stretching and reaching and balancing precariously. We were making good progress until we had to hang the gutter clips from the very tallest point—about 30 feet up from the cement driveway. After struggling to hang the clips and having quite a bit of difficulty, we decided to try another approach: climb onto the roof and try to hang the clips and the lights from the top down. The ladder didn’t quite reach the rooftop, nor did it give us a “safe” opportunity to climb onto the roof, so we opted to head up to the attic and climb out the attic window. I followed Nate out the window and scooted on my butt, foot by foot, across the rooftop—which is quite a bit steeper in actuality when your sitting on the roof and experiencing the angle. Looking up at it, it’s no big thing.

We managed to place a few clips; well, Nate managed to place a few clips. I just yelled at him to be careful and to not lean too far over the edge, because it’s a 30-foot drop to the concrete below. As Nate tried to grab onto the lights dangling from the last reachable hook by ladder, I headed back outside to watch him, hoping that the garbage cans would break his fall if he slipped.

The rooftop approach turned out to be a futile effort. He couldn’t reach the lights, and so I ended up scaling the front of our house to hang them from the clips he’d placed. The lights went up, neither of us went to the emergency room, and most importantly, Nate didn’t die from falling off the roof.

I must admit the end result makes me so happy. I love Christmas lights on my house, even if it means I have to take out an extra-large life-insurance policy.

This weekend, on December 1^st, the Kaiser family celebrated Christmas. Yes, it’s early—too early—to celebrate a holiday that causes retail-driven nightmares in most of the masses, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how the whole thing went over. The first snowfall of the season hit just in time to give us a white “Christmas,” or whatever you want to call it. And, no matter what the date, I always have a good time with the Kaiser clan.

A memorable component of every Kaiser gathering is the amount of protein on the meal table. This holiday was no different, with three kinds of steaks and Alaskan king crab for lunch (with a side of salad and rice pilaf for those Kaisers interested in maintaining a balanced diet) and ham for dinner. As I’ve learned in just a couple of years, ham is ALWAYS served on “Christmas eve,” even if “Christmas eve” takes place on Dec. 1. Complimenting the ham is ALWAYS potato salad (my mother-in-laws traditional recipe), steamed broccoli and some crazy concoction of fruit, nuts, sour cream and Jello that Nate fondly refers to as “scary Jello.” Yum! Makes you want to try it, doesn’t he?

[I wish we’d taken a picture of it—especially for my mom. My mom loves taking pictures with the food!]

Another memorable component of a Kaiser-family Christmas is the dreaded picture with Santa Claus. Even though all the Kaiser kids are grown, we still take pictures with Santa. It’s a bit embarrassing to have the six of us stand in line, joking our cruel jokes and sharing our snide opinions, surrounded by a bunch of little ones who are so eager to see Santa. I think we probably ruin it for some of the parents, who’d rather not wait behind a bunch of obnoxious adults.

But I also think the “elves” find it amusing, since we give some comic alternative to the crying kids. Oh, and Santa likes it—in a slightly perverted and gross kind of way. This year, they had me sit on Santa’s lap and the old geezer wouldn’t let me go! When he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I pointed at Nate and said, “He’s all I want; and I got him!”

I’d hoped Santa would get the hint and let me go, but instead, he gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. Creepy.

The best part of Kaiser-family Christmas, by far, is the roaring laughter that erupts from any part of the gathering where more than two Kaisers are gathered together. The best example comes from my eighteen-year-old brother-in-law who poetically wrote on my husband’s birthday card (and, yeah, Nate’s birthday is in JULY),

“Nate, I know I’m a little late on this birthday greeting. Sorry. Procrastination is like masturbation—you think you’re having a good time when suddenly you realize that you’ve screwed yourself. Happy Birthday.”

We were in stitches.