19" of Fresh Powder!

New Mexico is having one of the best winters ever! It seems like we're getting a weekly storm that is dumping 1-2 feet of snow each time. Sharee and I went up to Ski Santa Fe after it had just received 19" of new snow. It was a beautiful day with clear, deep blue skies, but it sure was cold. The base elevation at the resort is at 10,350 ft. elevation. The peak is at 12,075 ft. It was -4 degrees F. when we got to the parking lot and +12 degrees when we left at the end of the day. Here's what Sharee looks like with 6 layers of clothes + her new ski mask that with her goggles allowed her to have no exposed skin! The secret to getting Sharee to ski with you all day is lots of layers, and lot of hot chocolate.

Snugglin on the lift

We found the powder!

New Kitchen Nook!

So I came home from work one day and Sharee and Julianne had apparently decided to paint the nook. I guess we we're mixing things up a bit around here. Here are some photos of the nook-extravaganza.

Here is a before shot.




Here is the finished nook including a new chair rail and curtains. Jewels and Sharee are awsome!

Christmas Break

We took 2 weeks off to drive out to California to spend Christmas with the family. We started out the holiday fun by taking our family bowling along with Reed, Emma, Jacob, and Nathan. Good times...


Here's Sean enjoying some Christmas fun....yumm!


One of our Christmas traditions is having the kids act out the nativity story of Joseph and Mary as Grandpa reads it from the scriptures.


Here's one of the "wisemen" flashing a quick BLUE STEEL!


Here's one of Daphne very focused on her Christmas present.


On Christmas afternoon we went to Grammy and Grandpa Stones for the usual Christmas Dinner.


After Christmas we spent a week at Grandpa's cabin at Northstar-at-Tahoe on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in California. Heres a few shots of Sharee and her Sisters (minus Emma) along with a cute one of her and Daphne.



Here is one of Sean with his cousins Jemma and Kyrie.


Dallin was very excited to go to ski school this year. He kept talking about it for weeks before in anticipation. He did great. He learned to snowplow (i.e. the pizza) and even learned to start turning. By the 2nd day he could go off of the lift and we all rode home together on village run (A green run) with Grandpa assisting from behind when needed. He's a brave, adventurous little boy. He was very excited that he beat his Uncle Nathan down the hill.




Our Christmas present to Mom and Dad from the kids this year was a new tile floor in the kitchen. We ripped up the old floor and laid down tile. Here are some pictures of the Brian, Reed, and me at the tile cutter machine along with a shot of the finished floor. It turned out great and we were all proud of our work.



The busy weeks wiped us all out. Here are the kids on the drive back home to New Mexico.

Snow Storms

Well, just before Christmas we had the biggest snowstorm of our short few years here in Albuquerque. As you can see in the photo below the depth at our house was 11" of fluffy white stuff. After playing in it for the morning with the kids we had to head out for the drive to California for the holidays. We thought that would be the big storm of the year, but suprisingly another storm hit while we were in California during the week between Christmas and New Years that dumped another 22" of snow at our house! What a winter we're having.







...as you can see Sean could only take so much playing in the snow.



We'll post some Christmas photos later so for now we'll sign off and get ready to hit the New Mexico ski resorts! Angel Fire resort had 5 feet of snow in the last storm. See you on the lifts...