I meant to do this post a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just getting to it now I'm afraid. Jeff and I have wanted to try out an area nearby that just opened up a little while ago. They've got groomed trails for cross country skiers, and some sledding hills, etc. We finally went the Monday after valentines when Jeff was off work. 
The sad thing is that IN MY MIND I'm a great cross country skier, but the truth is we only get out there once or twice a year, and I seem to have to get my balance all over again every time. This shot was taken right before I fell over on my butt. Just standing there, no hills in sight. Oh well, snow is soft.
Our good friends Lesa and Kevin came too, and for being their first time in years, they were GREAT at it. Kind of embarrassing for ME, but hey, they look athletic right? They go downhill and stuff, so no real surprise. The trails at the resort were kind of limited, but we found the road up the canyon, and it was packed with snow and really fun. That was nice, because we went all around the whole place first and although having the trails groomed was easier, it gets kind of boring going multiple times on the same loops. The road went on forever.
It was also nice being in that many trees again. Up on the Grand Mesa where we go in CO, there are evergreens all around you, and it looks like a chapstick commercial. Here, they are all deciduous, and it's a different kind of beauty. There's moss growing on the trunks, and they're pretty dense once you're off the road, and once again, I guess I just like all the different shades of brown. Notice in this picture I'm BEHIND Lesa and Kevin. I was for most of the time. Jeff was so far ahead you can't even see him. I SWEAR I work out....
I had to show a picture of the "zert". Jeff kept telling us to look for the "zert" on our way up there, and I finally said "what's a zert?". He starts describing it, and I say it sounds like the tent things they have on that mountainbiking trip from Moab to Telluride, but I think they had a different name. Lesa softly says "yurts?". Yurts. Yurts I know about.
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I didn't tell you that along with spreading 4 loads of compost in our yard Saturday, and cleaning out half of the raspberry patch, and trimming up the sage and the lavender, and the blue fescue sections of the front, we took the kids to the dinosaur museum up at Thanksgiving Point. I don't know how many years it's been there, but we've been too cheap to do it until now. It was AMAZING! Look at the skeleton we're standing in front of: that's a prehistoric SEA TURTLE. Can you believe the size of it? Why was everything so big before? Blew me away. Don't lookat our creepy devil eyes --I can't figure out the stupid picasa red-eye fixer. I just gave up.
This was one huge room of five or six rooms. We kept getting lost it was so big ---OK, maybe we're just not that bright. Down near the bottom there were these displays of dinosaur eggs which was my favorite thing. I don't know why. One kind was perfectly round, which struck me as strange, but now that I think about it turtle eggs are round too aren't they? Also, there was a whole nest, with the eggs in it, which was really a cast (fossil) of the bottom of the nest turned upside-down. What it showed though was that the mom pushed her eggs into the sand a ways though so they didn't roll away. That was interesting I thought.
Here's my cute girls. I don't know what they are doing except looking cute. We also got to see a dinosaur movie on the IMAX screen in 3D which was awesome. I kept grabbing at the things poking out in front of me. I really caught the dragonfly in one scene. The dinosaurs almost stepped on us a bunch of times. They had this world renown scientist from Argentina in the movie (Dr. Corea), but you know what I think? I think he's famous and respected because he got lucky and found the biggest dinosaur skeleton. Really, I think he was lucky. I had all these professors at BYU that worked really hard, and published all the time, but didn't find the biggest anything, and so aren't really famous, and I don't think it's fair. OK, off the soapbox again.
Here we are in the entryway, Ari was scouting the giftshop (usually my kids favorite part of any museum), but they really liked the rest of this one too. When we left Kai said: "let's go to the dinosaur 'seum every day!" Here below is a video of the girls in the flood plain burying dinosaurs to make fossils, and changing the riverbed to "uncover fossils". At the end, you can see Kai in the background on the computer doing a dinosaur game. Where else would Kai be?
