Mountain time, winter edition

We headed up to Tahoe for New Year's Eve.  We're able to make it to the mountains for at least part of winter break and 1-2 weekends a month through ski season. Unfortunately, Daddy's knees are still out of commission, so he has to miss out on the skiing part.  

We're lucky to have lots of friends who can join us at the Truckee house or meet us at Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows.  

Sometimes, we have a big enough group to fill the entire lift chair:

We even meet up with our buddies Jackson & Xander, who moved to San Diego a few years ago.

Jackson and Lucie have been locked in a multi-year contest to be the craziest little sibling and are terribly competitive, which of course has led their classmates and big brothers to constantly harass them about being "boyfriend and girlfriend".   

While it's been a lot easier to connect with friends since we switched to the Squaw-Alpine season pass, one major disappointment is the lack of an ice rink.  Lucie loves to go skating and begs to go back to Northstar.  The Northstar rink is free, and if you are lucky, you can sometimes snag a comfy chair near one of the fire-pits and order a cocoa (or something stronger).  But it's a 20-30 minute drive from Truckee, and the parking there is a fiasco.  So guess how happy I was to discover the town of Truckee has their own ice rink at the park by the river?  It's not free, but pretty close to it, and WAY less crowded.

Sometimes, our friends are busy, and it's just the 3 of us -

- and that's still fun.

Sometimes, the middle schooler wants to learn to snowboard, and takes a lesson because I'm not about to try to teach that, and it's just Mommy & Lucie -

- and that's still fun.

Of course, we can't spend all our time in the snow.  Lucie's got the same 3rd grade teacher that Brennan had - Mr. Draven, the Man of 1,000 Field Trips.  She loves it.  Even the ones to Golden Gate Park, where they are really just unpaid child labor battling the invasive ivy.

She's also still riding every week or so, and helping her instructor socialize a new pony.  His name is Ducky, and she loves feeding him.

Brennan is a true San Francisco kid - there's nothing like a wet, gloomy day to get him all fired up to take Roux for a hike up a big hill.

He tried Futsal this winter, which I think he liked.  None of us were fans of the evening outdoor practice, but the games - 45 minutes long, indoors, always at 11 or 12 on Sunday at a nearby gym - are a piece of cake compared to driving across the city to shiver in some field for an hour and a half.

Of course, these days, we would give anything to be able to shiver in some unlovely field in an odd corner of the city with our friends.  Or pull ivy and find gross underwear in Golden Gate Park with our classmates.  Or go skiing, even if it's just with our mom.  We're two weeks into the emergency school closure and shelter-in-place, which two weeks ago seemed an impossible thing.  So we will hang in there, and daydream about next winter on the mountain.