I wrote about Special Olympics at Bogus Basin and I also wrote about the Sweethearts dance. But... I had not yet written about the other big event this past weekend: Klondike!!! It's where many of the Boy Scouts in this area do a big snow camp and "Klondike Derby," where more than 600 scouts camp out overnight in tents or in hand-dug snow caves, and they have all kinds of activities up there. It's a HUGE event each year, and the boys love it!!! Mark (pictured at left, kneeling just to the right of their troop's sled) went to that this year, and for about the first two hours after he got home Saturday evening, he would NOT stop talking about it; he was so excited. Then tiredness overwhelmed him and he fell asleep on the couch! :-)
I did not go up there, nor did Mark have a camera, so we've got to rely on the blog postings of others to report on the event. Our Boy Scout troop's scoutmaster's wife posted an entry on her blog, so you can check that out here.
Mark as a Guinea Pig???
She has posted three pictures up on her blog, including this at the right. In it, Mark is walking in a snowfield lined with sticks, all alone, while the other members of his scout troop look on in angst, like the expect it at any moment to go crashing through ice or something. Hmmm... I'll have to ask about this one. Was Mark a guinea pig???
Yesterday was our high school's "Sweethearts" girl-ask-guy dance. Brianna went with Scott Briggs and they had a great time. Brianna chose this pic on the right as her new Facebook profile picture, so I suppose it's OK to put here on the blog. :-)
Though we didn't experience this when we lived in California, here in Boise the high school dances are day-long activities, with a daytime activity in addition to dinner and the dance in the evening. For their daytime activity, the group they went with had "paint wars" where the loaded squirt guns with paint and had battle. I don't have any pics of that, but Brianna does, and I'm sure she'll post them on Facebook later.
Andrew and I were up at Bogus Basin yesterday afternoon, but Michelle took a bunch of pictures for Sweethearts yesterday afternoon. Personally, I think this one here on the left of Brianna and Scott is really cute.
Cutest of all, though, is the pic I've posted below. The girls in the group posed for a silly shot, and WHO KNEW that my beautiful daughter could make such a silly face???!!! :-)
For all the Sweethearts pics, you can see them here on Facebook.
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:
I wrote about Special Olympics at Bogus Basin and I also wrote about the Sweethearts dance. But... I had not yet written about the other big event this past weekend: Klondike!!! It's where many of the Boy Scouts in this area do a big snow camp and "Klondike Derby," where more than 600 scouts camp out overnight in tents or in hand-dug snow caves, and they have all kinds of activities up there. It's a HUGE event each year, and the boys love it!!! Mark (pictured at left, kneeling just to the right of their troop's sled) went to that this year, and for about the first two hours after he got home Saturday evening, he would NOT stop talking about it; he was so excited. Then tiredness overwhelmed him and he fell asleep on the couch! :-)
She has posted three pictures up on her blog, including this at the right. In it, Mark is walking in a snowfield lined with sticks, all alone, while the other members of his scout troop look on in angst, like the expect it at any moment to go crashing through ice or something. Hmmm... I'll have to ask about this one. Was Mark a guinea pig???
