This turned out to be one of our least structured vacations in a while.  After a rapid start of tubing and ski school, the rest of the week was unplanned.  On Wednesday, the kids stayed with Gran and GranDon.  They made a snow man together.  Later Lucy and Gran worked on learning to weave using a small loom Gran gave Lucy for Christmas while Max and GranDon went to the sports center for some ping pong and video hunting.  Toby and Matt saw Avatar and went grocery shopping.  What a day!

Wednesday night, we all went out to the Brickhouse Steak House for Gran’s birthday.  Lucy slept through most of the dinner.  

Thursday, it warmed up and rained, so the snow was on its way out.  The kids did a little bit of sledding in the morning, but most of the day was spent just lounging around.  Matt worked on fixing this blog and getting the older entries re-posted.  Toby made a great dinner that night and we feasted with Gran and GranDon.

Remember the picture of the snow?  Here is the roughly the same picture after the snow melted.

After Thursday’s lazy day, we needed to get out and do something.  By this time, the snow was completely gone.  The Theule’s and GranDon went to Sun Mountain Fun Center for bowling and arcade games.  Gran visited with a friend who lived in Bend, Oregon.  For lunch we all went to Red Robin.  The food and service were very good, but for me the highlight was the vanilla malted milkshake at the end.  Yum!

Saturday we have packed up.  Toby is taking a last minute nap and I am doning final cleanup before we hit the road for Portland.  Tonight at 8p, Max and Matt fly out and will spend Sunday at Poppa and YaYa’s house.  Toby and Lucy will be in Portland until Monday and then they will meet up with Max in Santa Clarita.

Happy New Year!

The weather forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is for "snow showers".  The Tuesday forecast is for PM ‘snow showers’.  If we were going tubing, it would best be Tuesday.  We chose the Hoodoo Autobahn

We arrived about 10:30a, and suited up.  Lucy and I started off in a double tube.  We hooked up to the tow rope and had a smooth ride up the hill.

After 2 runs in the double tube, Lucy decided she wanted to ride by herself.  I heard her laughing all the way down the 800’ run.  As the day wore on, the line for the tow rope got really long.  We switched to walking up the hill.  We could get 2 runs in the time it took to wait for the tow rope.  When I say that we walked up the hill, I mean Lucy rode like a princess in the tube as Dad huffed and puffed up the hill.  Max was fast up and down, and he probably got 1/3 more runs in total than Lucy and I did.

The PM snow showers began at about 2 pm.  By 3p, it was hard to see the bottom of the run.  Not being an experienced I was concerned about road conditions, so we had our last run at 3:15p.  I was right to leave early.  It was scary for me, although I later heard one local comment that ‘this was nothing’.

We make it up to Oregon about every other year around Christmas.  In the past we have gone tubing and sledding, but this year I wanted Max to learn to ski or snowboard.  I didn’t really care which, but I wanted him to have some professional instruction.

The nearest ski area to Eagle Crest Resort is Hoodoo.   Hoodoo has a Mountain Cubs program for kids under 6 years and a Junior’s program for kids under 12.  We saw on Google Maps that it was only about 25 miles from our resort, so I figured that 45 minutes would cover the travel time.  I also planned for 30 minutes before the classes started to get the kids signed up and fitted for rentals.  With the classes starting at 10a, I wanted to leave at 8:45a.  At 8:30a (when they opened), Toby called, just to make sure the class wasn’t full.  The person she talked to said that we should arrive 1 hour before the class and that the travel time would be closer to an hour.  He didn’t think we would make the morning class, even if we left right away (which we would not be able to do). 

So instead of running around screaming at each other feeling under the gun, we leisurely got ready for the afternoon classes (1p).  Toby had done a great job of borrowing snow clothes for everyone, so there was a lot of preparations to make sure we had everything for both kids.  My plan had been that I would snowboard during the kid’s instruction and Toby wanted to be available for Lucy. 

Our GPS had us taking some crazy small side roads.  Since it had recently snowed, neither Toby nor I wanted to be taking these types of still-iced roads.  So we winged it and just followed the highway signs (per the Google map).  We got there with about an hour and 15 minutes to prep the kids.  Even with all that time, by the end, we didn’t have any extra minutes; the kids were right on time.

In the running back and forth between Mountain Cubs and Juniors, I lost track of Max.  I had placed him in the instruction area, and he and I had talked to an instructor in the area.  I left him under the ‘Snowboarders- beginner’ sign, and when I returned after getting Lucy signed in and suited up, the instruction had spread out to various areas of the mountain.  After about 15 tense minutes, we found Max with the ‘Snowboarders- beginner’ class.  What took so long was that I was telling the Ski School supervisor that he was a first time snowboarder.  He was not with the ‘Snowboarders- first time’ class as I insisted he would be.  He was with the ‘Snowboarder – beginner’ class, having a great time.  When we finally found him, he had a big grin on his face and had made a couple of friends, so we left him in that group.  The instructors didn’t check his tag, and I put him under the wrong sign, so there was confusion all around.  But all is well that ends well.

Max snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Max Snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Max Snowboarding from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

Lucy did all the things that the instructors asked her to do, but she said afterwards that she didn’t like it (except for riding the lift).  When we are back in Oregon in two years, we will try again.

Lucy Ski School from Matt Theule on Vimeo.

We left Santa Clarita right on time and arrived in Burbank at 5:20a.  Our 7a flight had a 6:30a boarding time, so we were in good shape.  Until we saw that McD’s was not open.  McD’s was closed Christmas day, or at least was opening late.  Denny’s was open and we got Moons Over My Hammy sandwiches for take out.

We arrived right on time in Portland after our very early flight.  Christmas dinner was slightly delayed when the Wasson clan (8 members) had some motion sickness on the trip from Olympia to Portland.  All in all, there were 19 people for Christmas dinner.  It was great fun.

Camille didn’t feel well the next morning, so we drove to Eagle Crest on our own.  This place is nice.  Toby gives this place 5 out of 5 stars for the layout of the condo.  She loves that the master suite is on the second floor (thus the fact that she is able to take long naps).

Sunday morning we woke up to a very light snow.  The kids were so excited for the snow.  Lucy made a snow angel and we had a mini snowball fight.  We met a nice family at the local playground who let us borrow their sleds.  The resort is on a golf course, so there are lots of little hills to sled down.

Don and Camille arrived later Sunday afternoon.  We ordered pizza from Cibelli’s.  We thought that we would order 3 large pizzas for the 6 of us in order to have some leftovers for the rest of the week.  When I picked up the pizzas that Toby ordered, I was quite surprised at the size.  These were 24” pizzas.  I’ve never seen a 24” pizza before, and I carried out 3 of them.  Below is a picture of 1 of the boxes, with a piece of letter sized paper for reference.

  
Yikes!  Each slice was a foot long.

We have a lot of pizza to eat this week.

Max’s team ended up in 4th place for the AYSO Area 10W.  Area 10W covers north Ventura county and south Santa Barbara county, including:

• Ventura
• Camarillo
• Santa Paula
• Santa Barbara
• Ojai
• South Oxnard & Port Heuneme
• Fillmore
• North Oxnard & El Rio
• Carpinteria

I was not able to figure out how many under-10 boys teams were in Area 10W, but I know that Carp had 10 teams and Santa Barbara had 42.  Santa Barbara has a couple weeks of tournament play to select the 2 teams that will go to the Area playoffs.  I imagine that Ventura and Oxnard have similar numbers to Santa Barbara.  Whatever the actual number, the initial pool of teams was very large and to advance to 4th place was quite an accomplishment.