New Year in the PNW

It's been a while since I've posted...sorry about that. :)

Quite a bit has happened since my last posting back in December. For one, our house is no longer decked out holiday style. We also had an amazing hassle-free trip to Michigan for Christmas. And for the past two months, we've shifted back into life as usual. I've been kept super busy at work chasing ambitious deadlines for months on end. The past couple weeks, that's meant some long hours and late nights home. But I'm still absolutely loving my job, and though I may not like to admit it on weeks like this one where I'm looking at over 10 hours of overtime, I'd rather be busy and slightly stressed any day than be bored. Jared's work is also going great too! We have had some slight work-permit related hiccoughs these past couple weeks, but nothing that we're letting ourselves stress out too much over. It's been a good year so far!

A couple weekends ago, we had a couple days of wonderful blue skies and sunshine interrupt our usual grey and rain. And miraculously, the snowshoes at my work's outdoor shop (where employees can check out outdoor equipment like tents, sleeping matts, kayaks, and snowshoes for free) were available, so I snatched them up. We headed up to a trail in the mountains that is part of Cypress Provincial Park. The trail  lead us up to a mountain peak overlooking the city, ocean, and other Northshore peaks. For someone who has grown increasingly accustomed to sitting at my desk for days on end, the snowy inclines were at times a bit of a challenge. But we made it, and the views were worth it. Here are some of our photos:

These two bumps are the Lions. Maybe we'll explore them closer this summer when they're not so white :)

The birds at the top were super tame. It was fun to tap into the child in me and feed the little guys. They enjoyed my honey roasted sunflower seeds as much as I did :)

 Proof that we were wearing snowshoes...

 The sun was in a perfect position for silhouette photos. The trees in the background worked great as screens!

 Unfortunately, the "couple photos" a nice group of teachers took for us didn't turn out. It was so bright, one of us had our eyes closed in each one.

On the way down, we abandoned all sense of composure and did it the fun way: instead of carefully picking our way down the slopes, we sat on our butts and slid the whole way. It was sooooo much fun!

 We weren't the first ones to do it, so there were pretty well-defined tracks in the snow. It felt like a luge-run going around curves and corners. The only challenge was finding the balance between letting the snowshoes slow us down and keeping them from sticking in and flipping us over. And we had to be careful to avoid the exhausted snowshoers who were still climbing--it's a lot harder on the way up than it was down! But we managed to avoid any major accidents.

The only harm done was a rip in Jared's pants and some nasty bruises in areas we'd rather not mention. It was definitely an experience I'd like to repeat. And it felt fantastic being in the snow, being outside in the sun, and getting to enjoy these mountains around us. Sometimes it's a challenge to get out there and have fun exploring in the winter, but we both know that it's one of the reasons we're out here, so we've tried to make it a priority. It's nice when the weather cooperates and makes it easy for us!