we're moving the blog!

We registered a domain name and moved our blog over to a new host. If you want to keep following our adventures, check us out here:

www.siemprenieve.com

We'll be taking this one down after a month or so.

this one is for mom

My mom is not happy about the frequency of our blogging lately. To appease her, I'm rejuvinating our blog with a movie!

So here's a little flick of Rudy's first ski day ever, which happened on Saturday, mostly because Sean forgot his avalanche transceiver and we had to bail on our original plans.

Worked out great for Rudy though.

And for mom too.

Enjoy!

la conner strikes again

This town is hilarious. So many awesome random things happen. Like what happened just now. I was walking back to the office after lunch when I ran across a woman walking two alpacas. Yes, you read that right. Alpacas. Just walking down the street with them like she was walking a dog. Thank goodness for cell phone cameras. Crappy video, but you get the idea.



Apparently she breeds and shows the beasts and thought downtown La Conner would be a good place to "socialize" 'Cappaccino' and 'Mocha'. They were super cute, really friendly, but defintely unexpected on a Tuesday afternoon.



This stuff only happens here, I swear. I love it.

back in the white stuff

We just celebrated our first ski day of the 2009/2010 season! We skied (well, Sean skied and I flailed around) 40 inches of new snow with what seemed like the entire Bellingham ski touring community and their associated dogs at Baker on Sunday.

Skinning up...

Sean and Bill scope lines...check out all the snow!

Crummy shot of Sean on the down...

In addition to being an awesome powder day, it was the best puppy socialization opportunity we've had in Buddy's young life. The parking lot was full of cool mountain people and their awesome dogs. Little man did great and had lots of laid-back, friendly, athletic canine role models to learn from.

Future Pow Dog of America...

We're headed back to Baker on Friday, so look for an update this weekend as well.

On another note, Sean is about to start a regular M-F 9-5 job again, a milestone for his entrance into adulthood. Also a milestone for our PACNW adventuring, as we'll be on generally the same schedule again, making it easier for me to take advantage of my favorite ski/mountain bike/hiking partner.

Hooray for winter!

puppy!

Remember our dog poll? This Guy is coming home in 8 days.

I am obsessed with his cuteness. Sean is disgusted with my obsession. We don't have a name yet, should we do another poll?

we went backpacking...finally

A couple weeks ago we dropped the dog at the dog spa and went backpacking with our friends S and P. Sean and I have been working opposite schedules, so its been tough to find mutual time to enjoy living in Washington as much as we'd like to, but we made it out to the North Cascades for three days for this trip, and it was awesome. I am a big fan of the S and P backpacking approach, which involves sleeping in, eating well and a pace that provides plenty of time to look around. I'm also a big fan of their culinary skills. They have a food dehydrator, which allows them to produce backcountry deliciousness such as Chili and Pasta with Meat Sauce for dinner. To those of you who have never been backpacking and faced the challenge of finding food that doesn't weigh very much OR perish easily but also doesn't taste like cardboard, Chili and Pasta with Meat Sauce may not sound all that impressive. But to Sean and I, who almost always just add those weird vaccuum packs of tuna to mac and cheese for dinner, the S+P meals were heaven. Anyway, here are some pics:

Emerging from the woods...


S trudging toward our campsite...


Eating Dinner Day 1...Sean is so excited he can't keep his eyes open...


The second day it rained non-stop, but the weather oh-so-conveniently broke for 30 minutes at mealtimes thanks to our deal with the rain gods. We basically stayed in our tents all day, slept, talked, and took turns being the one pestering out of boredom and the one half annoyed/half hysterical from the pestering. It might sound tortuous to spend nearly 20 hours in a tent, especially when all 20 hours are spent with your significant other, but having that much forced downtime together was actually super awesome. We couldn't believe how quickly the day passed.

We woke up on day three to this:


..and did this...


...saw this...


...on our way to eat lunch here.


After lunch we took advantage of the best outhouse EVER.


Then we walked back down to our campsite...




...ate dinner, and watched the light show.


On the last day we hiked back down through fields of wild blueberries, picking and eating them all the way. When we got to the cars we took off our boots and hightailed it to Cascadian Farms for some more fresh blueberries, this time in the form of organic ice cream, the best post-hike refreshment EVER.

We love the mountains. Thanks S+P!!!

summer review in pics!

We've been doing stuff. It's been awesome. So here's a lazy man's blog post to show you what we've been up to...

Climbing trees...


Enjoying the Skagit Valley bounty...


Riding Bikes...


Dogsitting...




Hiking to Ski...


Challenging Maya's Down-Stay...


Hiking in the Cascades...


...and generally being dorks. Here's to summer! Until next year!