Snowy trip to Tahoe

We got some fresh snow during our visit.  It was very lovely. 

And Mousse absolutely loved playing in it.  

The kids helped dig out my car and I had to document it. 

 

Ski weekend

Everyone enjoyed a sunny weekend in the mountains.  

 

Tahoe for Tom's birthday

We headed up to the lake for Tom's birthday weekend, and brought Sunny along.  

Aren't they cute?

It was one of those typical bumper season weekends, not too crowded, with cold and clear weather.  

We went to town to stroll and shop. I made my kids take a picture in front of the big Christmas tree in town. 

Sunday was Tom's birthday, so we went out to dinner at a pizza place we like.  He got this mug of beer and we all toasted him. 

Monday was the first day of the Thanksgiving break for the kids so no school and no rush to get back to real life. We went down to Donner Lake for exploring and pictures. 

Cuties that I forced to be outdoors but ended up liking the adventure until we all got too cold. 

 

Halloween 2023

We had a low-key Halloween since it fell on a Tuesday. Serafina and her school friend Sydney dressed up like Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc. in these silly onesies.  They hit the neighborhood for trick-or-treating but not before I forced them to take pictures. 

Leo didn't go out but he did have a little photo shoot with this amazing clown outfit and glasses I picked up at the Goodwill last week.  

Mousse is handsome as always in his Halloween bandana. 

Serafina had quite the candy haul! 

 

Fall Tahoe Weekend

We took a quick trip up to Donner Lake to get the cabin ready for the winter.  That mostly just entails getting all our patio furniture into the shed, which left us plenty of time to soak up the sunshine on Saturday.  

I'm glad we got out and enjoyed the weather because it rained all day Sunday while we packed up and made our way home. 

 

Ft. Funston for some fun

It's been a while since we took Mousse to the beach.  He doesn't love the ocean, but he loves space to run and he is an absolute lunatic about a frisbee.  

 Water was cold but the sun was nice and it was a lovely day.  

Epic amount of snow!

Between Leo's broken arm and the crazy weather, we haven't been able to go up to the cabin much. It's been a historic winter throughout California and the Tahoe area has received an immense amount of snow.  Our neighbor sent us some photos of our little cabin buried in snow, but this weekend was our first chance to see it for ourselves.  Even though we knew it was fine (our rental management company has been out there several times to check on it) there was a particular sense of relief to see it still standing.  We arrived late on Friday night, so it was dark but we could still tell there was a massive snow pack.  

Saturday morning, Tom and Serafina headed out to ski.  A few hours later I took Mousse out for a walk and fully assessed just how much snow was all around our house and neighborhood.  

In most places the snow was triple or more overhead.  

When Tom and Serafina got home from skiing, she called me from the driveway.  I thought she needed help carrying stuff inside, but instead she wanted me to find her.  It took me a second, but there she was, on our second story roof. 

Of course Mousse had to climb up and join her.  

 

Snowy February

We went up to the cabin twice this month.  The first weekend in February the house was almost buried in snow.  On Saturday, we had beautiful weather and everyone had a good time skiing.  Mousse and I took a very long walk that day.  

On Sunday, it was snowing and only Tom went out to ski.  The kids and I worked on packing up the house so we could head home once Tom was home.  Well, the weather and the Highway Patrol had a different idea.  After it took Tom over an hour of harrowing driving to get home from the ski spot (our house is only 10 minutes away under good conditions), they ended up closing the highway.  Oh boy. I was pretty stressed about the situation, but Mousse was not. 

We ordered a pizza and hoped that by the time we were done eating the road would open back up since it stopped snowing.  And that's exactly what happened.  Of course, the driving was extremely slow and a bit slippery, so we got home very late. 

We headed back up to the cabin for Presidents Day weekend.  There had been lots of travel warnings because it was expected that a lot of people would be traveling to the area because of the record snow fall.  We waited until pretty late Friday night and got there with no issues.  Saturday and Sunday the skiers couldn't ski without extra costs because of the type of season pass they have, so we did other mountain things like take Mousse for walks and stroll around the adorable town of Truckee.  

Here's Mousse loving every minute of being in the snow, including on the beach at Donner Lake. 

Tom and Mousse taking in the view of Donner Creek running into the lake. 

 Here's a video of Serafina skiing on Monday. 

Unfortunately, Leo fell that afternoon and they ended their ski day a little early.  I picked them up, and Leo seemed fine.  He was hurting on Tuesday so he didn't ski, but Tom and Serafina did.  They wrapped up early again and we got on the road right as the snow was starting to fall.  We got home with no issues and I'm very glad we got out of the area when we did because they have had some extreme weather these last couple days with more to come! 

Winter Break cabin visit

We headed up to the mountains on Tuesday the 27th.  It was pretty easy to get there and we were happy to have some time at the cabin since we had to miss a visit earlier in December because of weather.  On Wednesday, the weather was clear but cold.  The skiers headed out to ski.  

Here's Leo's selfie.

Here's Serafina's...

I took Mousse for a snowy walk, which he loved, of course. 

It snowed over night so we woke up to fresh snow on Thursday.  They didn't end up going skiing because of the temperamental weather, so Tom joined us on our walk, which was combined with a game of fetch. 

We drove home on Friday in a storm.  It wasn't all that great and it took us a while to get home.  It's good that our dry state of California is getting so much precipitation, but I have a feeling it will impact our trips this season. 

 

Christmas 2022

We had a nice, quiet Christmas with my mom.  On the 23rd, I made a bunch of cookies to distribute to friends and neighbors.  After we made the rounds in the neighborhood, we headed to a drive-thru light display.  We were the last entry time at 9pm and even though it was a chilly night, there was a festive energy in the air as people hung out their windows and stood up through the sunroofs of their cars. Serafina had her head out of my car's sunroof and was yelling "Merry Christmas" to everyone.  Tom and I weren't sure what came over our usually subdued child, but it was a fun outing. 

Here are some pictures of the cookies I made. Chocolate chocolate chip in the front and orange molasses ginger in the back.  

And of course a giant (messy) batch of Mexican wedding cookies. 

Even though there were still plenty of cookies around, both the ones I made and those we were gifted, Serafina said we still needed to make our traditional butter cookies for Santa.  So I whipped up the dough and we pulled out the sprinkles.  

We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with my mom. 

Christmas is quite different with teenagers.  We didn't have to get out of bed until 8am!  They are also more low-key about everything.  There was no squealing or jumping up and down.  But there was a lot of gratitude for gifts and that's all I would hope for. 

Mousse gets excited about his gifts.  

He loves new toys. 

Christmas Day was lasagna day.  Tom made two full-sized lasagnas - one veggie, one meat. Here's all the noodles he cooked. 

And here's the end result.  They were amazing.  My mom came back over to enjoy them with us and then we froze a bunch for later. 

 All and all, a very nice Christmas holiday. 

Tom's birthday at the lake

Tom's birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so of course we spent it at the lake house - one of his favorite places.  It was a really nice weekend enjoying the beautiful location and eating yummy food.  

On Saturday, it was really chilly but Tom wanted to get out for a walk.  We went to the Donner Memorial State Park on the other side of the lake.  It's been a long time since we've been there.  

Did I mention it was cold?  Oh and Leo has outgrown his snow boots so he did this snowy walk in sneakers.  We all survived, even after some slips on the ice (me and Leo) and plenty of complaining.  The dog had the most fun as always.  

We went to dinner at a pizza place and they had these comically large mugs.  Cheers to the birthday boy!

Sunday was warmer but the kids couldn't be convinced to come down to the lake with us.  It was gorgeous and Mousse did a lot of running around.  

We drove home Monday evening since the kids have the entire Thanksgiving week off.  I think Tom had a good birthday weekend.