Fernie Trip #2!

I have posted in the past month about us skiing. It's been years, at least 6, since we've last skied. But now that we have a few times I've realized how much I love it. We were lucky enough to go again on Friday. We stayed the night at Richard's parents on Thursday and they watched the kids Friday.

Richard and I went to the temple Thursday night too. Which was so nice. It was a very small session and just what we needed. I left feeling spiritually uplifted. We for sure need to go more often. I find it easy to make excuses, and there have been a lot lately.....kids sick, us sick, Richard's work, meetings, etc. Life is busy, more reason why we need to go. When we walk into the temple I feel like life slows down, I can take a deep breath and not worry about all the little things. Anyways, just thought I'd share some of my feelings about that.

We woke up early Friday morning and took off. We met my sister Megan in Fort Macleod and she jumped in with us. We made awesome timing and got to Fernie just about 9am. We were on the hill by 10am. Richard decided to snowboard again and I just stuck with skiing. Oh I should mention that in Kalispel I bought myself a much needed winter coat. It was originally $180.00 and I got it for $31.99. Then here in Lethbridge I bought myself some ski pants, gloves and neck warmer all for $55. So I spent under $100 and got myself a matching ski outfit. I was quite impressed with myself.

The weather was so nice out. It got to plus 3 with big fat snow flakes coming down almost the whole day. The only time it was windy was when we went to the top of the mountain. We stuck to the easy runs the first few times. Then we got adventurous and Megan and I studied the map (that's scary in of itself!) and showed Richard what we wanted to do. He had his doubts, but came with us. We went up one chair lift and had to ski down a steep part to get to another chair lift that took us to the very top! We found a green run that would take us down the mountain, according to the map. But as we were on the 2nd chair lift, we were noticing half the mountain was roped off with avalanche warning signs on the ropes. Not a good sign. Sure enough when we got to the top most of the runs were closed. It was so windy up there we were having a hard time standing still. We finally figured out that there was only ONE run open. The one that goes straight down the mountain. We stood there and my heart dropped. But there was no other way, so Richard (being the brave man he is) took off. Megan followed then I followed her. Oh my, it was CRAZY! That's the only word I have for it. Richard even agreed with me. He usually goes on any run (with skis anyways) and is fine. But the run we did was straight down and had the moguls, plus all the new fluffy snow piled everywhere. We all had some really good wipe outs. I was ready to give up and Megan yelled at me that we were almost halfway down. It took us a long time, but we made it!

Richard (on the left) and Megan, coming down the hill on their boards. This pictures perfectly shows you how much it was snowing most of the time.

Megan took this awesome picture of me skiing past her. Like my outfit...ha ha ha!

Megan making snowboarding look really easy!

Here comes Richard. For only his 2nd time snowboarding he is really good!

After we made it to the bottom we went for lunch at the lodge. I was completely exhausted. We all agreed not to do that again! After lunch we took off and did more runs. I brought my camera and we had fun taking pictures. We had some funny moments too! Richard and Megan wanted to practise their "carving", so they were going down really easy runs. So we agreed to meet back at a certain time and I took off by myself. I went half way up the mountain and came down. I realized half way down that my legs were so tired. They felt like jelly when I got to the bottom. So I went to find Richard and Megan. I stuck with them and we had a lot of fun. Megan was tired and went back to the lodge, and I did on more run with Richard. Then he decided to try a different bowl at the top of the mountain (different side then we did before). So I left and went back to the lodge at about 3:45pm. I was so tired. It was a fun day. I told Richard to smile and this is what I got! This was at the top of the run we were going down.

This is when I met back up with Megan and Richard. I saw that they were getting on the chair lift as I was heading up. So I waited and got a picture of them. It was kind of funny cause they were too busy noticing I was standing there that they almost forgot to get off the chair! It was funny!

Megan and I ready to go down the hill. We've had so much fun skiing with Megan the past couple of times!
Megan posing with her snowboard. This was while we were waiting for Richard to return his board.

We took off when Richard got back and headed for home. We had a lot of fun that day. Lots of laughing, like real hard laughing, where my eyes start crying cause I'm laughing so hard! For example on the way up I was driving and Megan and I were talking about seeing a Moose. I told her about when I saw my first moose and how it scared me. When all of the sudden I saw something on the side of the road. I screamed, "MOOSE", which promptly sent Richard flying up in his seat. Megan then screamed, "ANOTHER MOOSE". I went to say, "I see the Meese.", but Megan then yelled, "OH NOT MOOSE THEY ARE ELK." Richard looked and said, "You guys are crazy that's a statue (which it wasn't)." Anyways, I then told Megan that in the excitement I was going to call the two moose, meese. You know like goose and geese. Well that was enough to have us laughing so hard that my side hurt. Then Megan and I basically laughed for the rest of the ride, which was about 45 mins. We took turn telling stories and laughing so hard. The best was Megan and the fatcat (a motorbike), hilarious! Anyways, it was a real fun day.