A Day at Bogus Basin

Today we had a really great day up at Bogus Basin, our local ski resort. Michelle, Andrew, Steven, and my mother-in-law Nancy and I volunteered at the regional Special Olympics Nordic events up there this morning, sort of in honor of Michelle's brother Michael and his love of Special Olympics. Our family worked at the main staging area, with Michelle leading that area, in which she did a great job! We were responsible for getting the athletes from the lodge area down to the next staging area and the starting lines. At the right here is Michelle with one of the athletes.

Since moving to Boise, where there is a much smaller pool of volunteers to draw from, we've had quite a few more opportunities to help with Special Olympics than we did down in Southern California. Justin and Christopher have both been coaches for Special Olympics; I think some of the best memories Justin will ever have is getting to run alongside a blind athlete to "show" him the way. No doubt Justin and Christopher would have enjoyed being there with us today.

As you can see in this panoramic shot on the left, it was an absolutely gorgeous day up there. If you click on that photo to see it enlarged, you'll notice Andrew in the lower right hand corner. And being such a gorgeous day, this afternoon Andrew and I stayed up there to snowboard and ski. Andrew has become a really good skier, and especially with my bad wheel, he would normally blow me away on skis, and I would have rarely if ever seen him. But for the first time in about four years, he decided he wanted to try snowboarding again today. That was REALLY cool for dear ol' Dad here, because with Andrew on a snowboard, I could keep up with him. We got to spend the whole afternoon together, and I don't know that Andrew will ever know how special that was to me!

Andrew did pretty well on the snowboard, though - I think better than he expected. I was able to ski near him and take quite a few videos - that was fun! Below is one of those videos. He and I are talking to each other on this run, so turn the volume up when you take a look at this. He does pretty well right up until the end, when he eats it. Though he said it was harder than skiing (of which I have no doubt), he said it was more fun, and that he'll be doing a lot more boarding from now on. Here's the video:



You'll find all 27 pics and 6 videos from the day on our Flickr site here. The pics can also be found on my Facebook account here. Meanwhile, enjoy some more pics below.

We had to be up there by 8am this morning, so we got to see the sun come up while there; it was really quite pretty.

Michelle and Nancy with Sheri (sp?) one of the organizers of the event.

Steven playing in the snow.

Michelle organizing the troops.

Andrew and I are going down one of the CAT trails at Bogus (Andrew is in front of me, at the bottom of the pic).