Thanksgiving and birthdays!

On Thanksgiving we got to celebrate with my parents, my grandma, and our wonderful hosts Ruth and Jordan! (Elise & Paxton were spending the holiday in Park City with his family--we missed them!)



So fun for our kids to get to spend time with Great-Grandma!

We also loved seeing the Carmel High School marching band in the Macy's parade (fresh off their win as national champs, woohoo!)

Another photo from sometime late at night on Wednesday, this day was actually Ruth and Neil's birthday and this is how they wound up the celebrations, haha. Ruth had a very specific vision of magnificent pies and we were her sous-chefs! 

This is one of the ones we made that night, seriously one of the best pies I've ever eaten (that gingerbread crust--perfection). 

I mean really it's all about the pies...(Jordan and I dropped Neil's beautiful turkey on the oven door but managed to rescue it). 

My dad also made prime rib which SHOULD ALWAYS BE A THING AT THANKSGIVING (I think I seriously just ate prime rib for every meal for the next few days, if you know me well you know there's nothing I love as much as cold roast beef). 

Including this picture just for Neil's face 

Let's get another look at those pies...

Let's keep this reverse order thing going! The day before Thanksgiving was Ruth's and Neil's birthday. Neil and I went skiing at Alta for the day--Ruth had a way less fun day with a trip to Huntsman, but she picked up some amazing cakes in Salt Lake! (Can you tell who knew their photo was being taken and who was soooo tired from skiing and just wanted some cake? Sorry Neil!)

We had suuuuch a good day, the snow was amazing for so early in the season (no wonder bc it's been a record year for snowfall in Utah!) and we skied like maniacs. This is the first time we've ever been to Alta together (we've both skied there solo in the past) so it was fun to show each other our favorite runs!



I also made Neil actually stop for lunch for the first time in his skiing life (the man is a firm believer in skiing every possible second from rope drop to last chair, he carries a backpack and eats on the lift). 

And going back in time again--on Tuesday we had a lovely chill day of board games and hanging out at my parents' house, it was seriously so fun. Then the adults all went out for dinner that night which was also really lovely. 

Somewhere there is a picture of Elise about this same age with a very happy Abigail who just finished decorating her hair. It was fun to see that come full circle with Iris!

We had a truly great afternoon!! This was such a fun relaxing day AND we had leftover pie so truly, could not get any better. 

 

A week in Utah

In mid-March, I flew to Utah to spend a week with my extended family eating delicious food, hanging out, and SKIING! Mary Beth & Julie had flown in from Toronto, my parents had just moved to Provo a few weeks previously and my grandma a couple months ago, so I decided to book a flight to overlap with Mary Beth for a couple of days and then Rosalind hopped aboard, so we had about 36 hours of all my sisters being in the same town as my parents and grandma. This is the first time this has happened since Christmas of 2015, so it was pretty exciting!



I'm going to go through skiing pics first because that's the way it loaded on the post, even though that's not the chronological order (I am SO tired of Blogger's weirdness with loading photos; anyone know how to get it to upload in chronological order?!)

Anyway, the above pic is from my first day at Alta, when Ruth and I decided to ski through the avalanche gates onto Cecret Saddle. You can't really tell well from that pic but it was steep and chunky!! And the bowl down below me is a lake that there were all kinds of signs about avoiding (this is such a pretty hike in summer). 

Ruth and I had SUCH a fun day together; she is one of my very favorite people to ski with. 

And it was a perfect bluebird day! I rented boots and skis on this trip and holy cow it made such a difference to not be in massive pain from my boots. They weren't the best fit but LIGHTYEARS better than my custom boots in Vail (btw two of my toenails have grown back and one still has a loooong way to go). 

Such a good lunch at Collins Grill; it was heaven taking our boots off and putting on plushie slippers! 

Such a great day together and I loved every second. Ruth is seriously such a fun skiing buddy and I love seeing how skilled she's gotten over the last two seasons living in Utah. 

The next day we were back at Alta, but this time with my dad, Ruth & her husband Jordan and her kids Evelyn and Caleb, my sisters Rosalind and Elise, and Elise's husband Paxton and son Pierce. It was a full house and so amazing to have so much of our family together on the mountain! (Just wish Neil and my kids had been there...)

Rosalind hadn't skied since middle school, so Ruth was a fantastic teacher and took on guiding Rosalind down the mountain. We kind of stayed together in loose groups for the first hour, and then Evelyn, Jordan, and I went up another lift to do some more advanced stuff. Then we all met up for lunch and while everyone else was finishing lunch, Jordan and I decided to get in a couple runs on some of the really good black diamonds that we could see from the window where we were all eating. Then we basically went nuts and started skiing the hardest stuff we could tackle for the rest of the day. It was SO good and such an awesome afternoon--we were kind of egging each other on and just had a fantastic fantastic afternoon. Thankfully while we skied stuff well above our ability level, we always managed to get out safely! (And aborted once when we realized we were too late in the day to keep going much deeper into the gated stuff.) 



I promise this chute was much harder than it looks, haha! This was at the end of all the tricky bits. 



Any day that involves these signs from the other side is a good day. 



Looking up towards the Baldy Chutes...we were trying to get further over but realized we'd dropped in too low, and sadly didn't have time to catch another lift to get higher. But look at all that untracked snow! 



Thoroughly enjoyed my Plater days at Alta!

On Monday we went to Sundance--the snow was pretty bad but I got to meet up with my dear friend Kelsey, who moved away in February 2020 (the worst timing!) Kelsey and I used to run together every day and since she moved we have texted each other our daily workouts for more than TWO YEARS. Every day!! It's always such a treat when we get to meet up and do our workouts together in person. 

We skied with Kelsey for about an hour and then had the rest of the day skiing with Ruth, Elise, and my dad. We had a fantastic lunch at the Foundry Grill (mmm Sundance has SUCH good food). 

The snow was absolutely terrible on the front but the back stayed pretty good for most of the day; what's a bummer about Sundance is that it's pretty limited. We did a few runs down Bishop's Bowl & Pipeline and I tumbled my way down the Headwall and Freddie's, but we are now 2/2 on terrible Sundance experiences in subsequent years because the return to base was almost completely melted out, ABSOLUTELY should not have been open, and one of my sisters had an unavoidable accident that will require ACL surgery. 

Okay, shifting gears after that very sad story--some pics of all five sisters together!

And with my grandma (who will be 99 this weekend!) 

And another one with my mom. 

I got a few Instagram DMs about my expressions here...we had been taking pictures for SO long and I really just wanted to go sit down again with my dinner! 

When I flew in Wednesday we all got together for a delicious dinner at Black Sheep, which I didn't take any pictures of, but I did grab a picture during our tour of Ruth and Jordan's new house! It is going to be SO gorgeous 

and then Thursday my mom and I took a sunrise walk around their neighborhood. Pretty fantastic views!!

Then we went to BYU Food to Go to grab some mint brownies (it was St. Patrick's Day). 



And then my mom and I walked down to campus and met Mary Beth, Julie, and Ruth. We went through the MOA, wandered around the bookstore and the Wilk, and then I headed over to meet up with my MA thesis advisor. I had such a fun hour catching up with him, and then we went to the Creamery for fries where we met up with Rosalind, who had just arrived from her flight, everyone else got JDawgs (which I don't love), and then Slab Pizza for actual lunch. 

Then we went on a quick walk up Rock Canyon before Mary Beth & Julie went to get their COVID tests so they could fly back to Toronto the next day. Enjoy some pics from Rosalind's IG stories. 

Then back to Ruth's for St. Patrick's Day dinner via acai bowls...

And some photos with my cute little nieces! (For some weird reason the nephews didn't want to leave their Legos for photos, haha.)

Some pics after Sunday dinner at my parents' house...Ruth got both Iris and me hooked on these diamond paintings!

And Bombay House for my last night (and my sister walked all around downtown Provo on a torn ACL--um, crazy! I feel so bad about this in hindsight!!). 

 

It was such a fun and delicious week and I'm so grateful to everyone who made it possible!!