Drove up to Mammoth Mountain on Saturday. For you non-California dwellers, Mammoth is mountain ski area about 6-7 hours from San Diego. Big Bear is closer but usually is mostly man-made snow and overcrowded. I drive up and we stop one time and one time only. We stop for gas, a potty break, stretch the legs then pile back in. This year the drive up was insane. They've changed the two lane highway into a predominately no-passing zone. Half the trip is now mindless and frustrating when you get behind a big truck... where it used to be a mental exercise to determine how to safely pass all the way down the 4 hour span of highway. Usually the weather is inclement and somewhat scary but this year it was 70 degrees all the way up. We even had to run the air conditioner at one point. We arrived to sunny skies and a mountain of snow. It was so nice and the lifts had just closed that the kids and I threw on our clothes and went to the base of the lift for some sledding.

Sunday it snowed all day. Since the kids and I were having an inside day, only The Husband was affected by the white out.... and it made Monday a wonderful day of snow. The Son took a snowboard lesson, The Daughter, a ski lesson with her little friend (she'll be a snowboarder but her friend was taking a ski lesson).

The instructor told me "She's so coordinated, so athletic!" Yes, she is our little wonder. He told me she blew through lessons 1 and 2... something that apparently takes two lessons and not just one. I felt bad telling him she'll likely switch to snowboarding next year.

The Son did great on his lesson... and seemed to like it so much that he went up with The Husband right after he was done. The Husband has been waiting 9 years for this moment:

I found time to practice on Sunday. The hotel has a very small workout room. The only yoga studio in town has apparently discontinued all but one ashtanga class (they used to have a great intro to second class and a primary series class too). It was cold in there so I wore a bazillion layers, hooked my iPod up to one of the layers, moved the equipment out of the way in a corner and practiced. I was worried I'd be stiff having not practiced in so long... but, instead, I was amazingly open and warm. I even broke a sweat regardless of the fact that the lifts had closed and people, mostly kids, were trekking back and forth through the door next to me to get to the pool. This let all the cold air in. Kids came and went, stopped and stared, came back, yelled...then an entire two families decided that they would bring all the kids and adults into the workout room to dry off from the pool... each kid lined up and watched me (I was about at Mari B at this point). I was so open that I just couldn't/wouldn't stop... and kept going... and then I got to backbends.... and dropbacks... 3 teenage boys were "working out" in the room. On my second backbend I popped up... just popped up... so I started dropping back... and it was oh so nice. I could hang out halfway for what seemed as long as I wanted before dropped down nice and soft and quiet and popping back up. It was lovely....

I did about 20 of them....

my quads have burned ever since.

This morning the kids and I got up to see the Huskies:

There were 12 of them:

The brown one is a mix of chocolate lab and husky... the rest all huskies with one malamute mix. They are born and bred to be sledding dogs and they love kids. They have never walked on a leash, know the words easy, ha (means left) and whatever the right word is... and they get really excited and jump up and down when they are nearing the time to pull the sled. They pee while pulling and running (but they do stop for "nuggets").

The kids had a great time and begged to do it again. Maybe next year....