Monday, January 14, 2013

Thank you cards coming soon!


Stationery Card
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Skiing with uncle Scott!!




Hi again!

Thought I'd share a few more pictures with you while I'm downloading them from my phone. 
Here Henry is on his new "fast" skis trying them out for the first time. I'm running along/snowboarding  taking photos and throwing out words of encouragement while Ben is hands on picking Henry up when he falls, giving instructions, and trying to teach him to turn/snowplow, and just being a general comfort to Henry by running along side offering a hand just in case he needs it. 

 Henry loves the new skis and really did go quite a bit faster. With real ski boots he was also able to keep his ankles straighter and get a bit more balance. 
 As I mentioned in the lengthy post below, Scott happened to be on the mountain the same day and took Henry for a few real ski runs.
 I helped him off and on the lit and ran down the mountain like a fool taking pictures while Scott did all the rest. He really got Henry into it. We are in trouble now. Running alongside may no longer be acceptable to him. 
 Henry loves uncle Scott! We were so excited to see him on the hill. 
This was definitely Henry's favorite time skiing so far!!

 Here is the temp today just in case anyone is wondering. 
yes, that is a negative 11 degrees you are seeing. BRRRR. 
The plan was to take Henry up again today for a half day, but it's sooo cold, and Henry has actually caught a slight sniffly nose & cough, so I'm keeping him in and feeding him lots of chicken soup & trying to keep it from becoming a full blown winter snot fest kind of cold. 
I'm pretty sure I'm on my way to catching whatever it is myself, because I was holding him early this morning (around 3am) when he called me in, and he coughed straight up my nose..yuck! He coughed in my face a bunch more this morning when he woke up, so wish us all luck. Lots of vitamins and resting for team Davidson today.... well, except Ben who has to work. (although I wouldn't be surprised if he took a half day since they are ahead of schedule anyway)
His van was actually so cold this morning that even after warming it up the antifreeze was frozen causing the van to overheat etc... BRRR! so cold here, but so pretty with all the snow! 
I'm sure we will try to keep you all updated while we are in Bozeman. Hope everyone is having a winter as fun as we are! 

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Before I add more pics, I'll fill you in a little

While I'm waiting for Ben to return my camera I'll fill you in a little on where we are, and what we are up to. 

    We have left Blakely Island and are in Bozeman Montana!... well.. Belgrade to be exact. We have a lease for a furnished house in downtown Bozeman, but it's not ready for another couple weeks, so we had to do a weekly rental in belgrade while we wait it out. Why didn't we just stay on Blakely you ask? Because Ben was asked to come early for work. He has been itching to get here anyway, so it seemed logical at the time...
    Anyway, here we are. We have been here exactly a week today! We are in a nice subdivision with a sledding hill right behind the house and an iced over lake where people ice fish and skate, so it's been pretty good! Henry has gone sledding three times, and skiing three times, so he's been a busy boy, which means we've been busy too!
     Ben is almost done framing the house he came early to frame already, and will be waiting on trusses soon. It's going super fast! He even took Friday off to have a family powder day at Bridger Bowl. We took that opportunity to introduce Henry to the char lift and get him going down a real ski slope. Uncle Scott bought Henry a new set of skis for Christmas & we had tried them out quickly on the sledding hill on Thursday, but this was the real test. After a few runs Henry wanted to go faster & was getting really unpatient with his "slow" skis. He kept pointing at the bigger runs & saying he wanted to go on the steeper hill! ha ha. The trouble really was that the baby training skis he got had little scales on the bottom to make them slower & easier to learn on. That might work for a more timid child.. but Henry has a need for speed.
    So after leaving the hill, we went to a second hand shop and bought him a pair of big boy "fast" skis. Then yesterday we hit the slopes again to try them out. AMAZING! Success; we had speed! This required some relearning since these ones took real ski boots instead of snow boots, but he took to it quickly! he loves his new fast skis and although we are still learning the snowplow, he can turn with some instruction and luckily doesn't seem to mind crashing.
Uncle Scott even happened to be there yesterday & found us on the hill. He took Henry for three runs!! I'm pretty sure that was his favorite part of the day! Henry loves uncle Scott & they went really fast down the hill together! Way faster than mom & dad were going. :)
    So that takes us up to taday. We are at home today trying to organize, write Christmas thank you cards (yes, late again) and of course watch the HAWKS game!!! Ben is off buying some new ski boots, because after watching Scott with Henry yesterday, we have realized that to teach Henry to ski, we should be skiing, not snowboarding.. bummer. I bought new boots yesterday, because as you can see from the picture on the post below, the back of my calf is super bruised from my old ski boots. They fit great before I had Henry, but my foot grew, so they are way too small now and they sit funny on my foot cramming the back into my leg at an awkward angle. Ouch! I'm surprised I made it down the mountain I was in so much pain. My toes were actually worse. They were crammed so hard into the boot that they went numb before I even got off my first lift. Thought I was going to break them for sure.
Oh well, new boots, now I have comfy feet!
    We left the marina with some projects still to do. We plan to come back to the island either April or may. I'm pretty sure I'll be going first.
    Actually, we are headed back to Washington next weekend to go to the Seattle gift show for the marina. We will only be around for a couple days before coming back to Montana. I need to head back to Washington in Feb too for a baby shower for Courtney!! super excited! I think I will leave Henry with Ben for that & take a long weekend so I can make it a shorter drive by myself with less henry stops.
    Ok, so I think I've got you pretty much caught up. More pictures coming soon.
Love, Team Davidson!

coolest Christmas tree ever?!

Ok, so don't mind all the stuff on the table, but I'm pretty sure it's safe to say we had the coolest Christmas tree ever this year! 
Why? 
Because it was entirely star wars themed!

 Here are a few (slightly blurry) shots of the awesomeness!! 

 Yes, that's Chewwy!
I forgot to post this before, so it's a bit out of order, but I thought you'd all like to see it anyway. 
Just so everyone knows, Star Wars is one of Henry's very favorite movies, so he was beyond thrilled with this tree! He was so sad to see it taken down. The ornaments belong to Ben's mom Laurie. She has the whole Star Wars collection from Hallmark and let us use them for our boat tree! How cool!!

Some Bozeman Pictures..more coming

Henry on his new "big boy" skis. Trying to ski inside is not easy.
First day on the slopes. 
Henry loves the chairlift!
 Learning to turn

 Showing off his ski pass with papa in the lodge. 

 This is what Henry looked like at the end of the day. 
after this quick "nap" on the floor he was back out on the hill for 3 more runs before totally passing out. 
This is what my leg looked like at the end of the day! 
This is what bad ski boots do to you people! 
Pay the money & get good ones... lesson learned!
 This was Henry's first day ever on skis!
 I took him out on the local sledding hill behind the house & we gave it a good go before hitting the real slopes at Bridger Bowl. 
So much powder!
 MMMM
 So much snow to eat!
 snowballs are pretty cool too.
 is this the cutest kid you've ever seen or what? 
 Bridger skiing.
 So cold!
 Wish you could see his face. It was -1 degree, so we had to bundle up!!
More pictures on the way!! Ben has my phone with all my pictures on it from skiing yesterday!!