Just can't escape the snow storms

My law school has a "Winter Break" and so I didn't have any classes last Friday or yesterday. Steve and I decided to take advantage of the long weekend by flying out to Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday night and visiting his parents in Sun City West.

Our days were filled with activities like visiting estate sales, going to the 2011 Arizona Wheels of Italy, driving around the streets in a golf cart, consuming yummy food and drinks, playing the slug-bug game, and a lot of hiking (White Tank and McDowell Sonoran Preserve).

Steve was the camera master, so unfortunately I don't have any photos to post yet. But there were some amazing views from the hiking trails.

We originally planned on going up to the Grand Canyon on Sunday, but turns out Minnesota wasn't the only state having a snow storm. We got to around Sedona and the highway troopers closed the roads. The drivers out there really did not know how to deal with snow on the road and there were a couple times when I worried we were going to be hit by some out-of-control car. Finally we decided to just turn around and save the Grand Canyon experience for another trip.

On Monday evening we flew back and arrived home at about 12:30 a.m. It was a great surprise to discover that one of our neighbors had snow plowed the driveway! Though we had to deal with the Arizona snow storm, it was clearly nothing compared to what had happened back home.

Pizza and Fries in skiing?

Last weekend I went skiing with Steve and the boys. Just to give some perspective, I've skied probably a total of three or four times in my life - two of these instances were in middle school and the last time was about three years ago. So to say the least, I was a bit nervous about my ability to stay upright and return home without any broken bones. However, I am happy to report that it all went really well and was a great trip!

Both Saturday and Sunday we went skiing in the morning for a couple hours, took a lunch break, and then skied a couple more hours in the afternoon. I'll fully admit that the boys and I spent the entire time on the same hill, which had various green and blue runs. It was nice though because I was able to spend time developing my stopping skills and moved past the "pizza"/snow plow technique to the "fries"/parallel turn style.

Hopefully we'll get to go again before the skiing season ends!