Balance

This week I've been really struck by this quote from Vai Sikahema:

"The Church is a great equalizer. If you are abundantly blessed with any one thing — money, intelligence, musical talent, celebrity or whatever — you will typically find yourself serving someone who is limited in that capacity or even without. . .One of the many ways the Restored Gospel blesses us, is in the balance it gives our lives."

Our Great Escape

Since he got to go to Vegas, Austin decided to take the rest of the family to do our homage to Jimmer Fredette by visiting his hometown of Glens Falls, NY. Which just happens to have a hotel with

A huge indoor waterpark!

An eighty-five degree tropical wonderland with pools, sprinklers, sprayers, squirters, and of course . . .

Waterslides!

and BIGGER waterslides!

and a FAMILY-SIZED waterslide!

And a lazy river for when you're totally exhausted from all that watersliding.

At the end of the day when we were completely waterlogged we headed back to the room, changed into jammies, and went to hear bedtime stories with Scooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo even came to our room and delivered cookies and chocolate milk. The bedtime snack worked, the kids fell right to sleep and had TONS of energy for another half-day of waterparking the next morning. They can't wait to go back again. In all, it was a nice mini-vacation to escape dreary mud season in Vermont!

Mountain West Tourney

Three Gray Men in Vegas.

Three days of college basketball = Fifteen basketball games.

Fifty-two points scored by #32 Jimmer Fredette against New Mexico.

Ten future Jimmers. They grow them tall in the Gray family!

Snow Day

The forecasters yesterday told us 10-12 inches possible -- but as of now we have about 28 inches out there and it's still coming down. Biggest snowstorm of the year. Biggest, in fact, since we moved to Vermont! The kids have no school, of course. The surprise was that this storm was so unexpectedly severe that Norwich cancelled all morning classes, the courts closed, and Austin's flight to Utah for the Mountain West Basketball Tournament was cancelled because Burlington Airport closed. (No worries, he'll still make the tournament, just miss a planned ski day at Snowbird.)
Why, oh why, didn't we pull the car into the barn last night? It took us an hour to dig it out, then another hour to dig it out again when it got stuck pulling into the back driveway.

It is beautiful, though. It's hard to see in this picture, but the snow has completely covered the cupola on the barn so it looks like the weathervane is sticking out of a triangle of snow.

Austin trying to get the snow down off the roof so we don't get more ice dams. The snow has almost covered the window next to our table.

Our poor little bridge. The flooding that brought down the bridge yesterday left a huge lake in the field. We snowshoed down there to see if we were going to have our own two-acre hockey pond. Lucy got there first and ran out onto the "ice" and fell right through. Luckily it was only about 18 inches deep at the edge. She had a lukewarm bath and is now just fine (I rescued her, and I'm fine too.) I think we'll stay inside for the rest of the day. Gavin is the only member of the family who hasn't had his boots flooded with ice-cold water in the past 24 hours, and it's probably best to keep it that way.

Bye Bye Bridge

Before:

After:

Our cute little footbridge over the stream came down this morning. An unseasonably warm March day, mixed with a good downpour of rain, led to huge volumes of water coming downstream over ice blocks that hadn't melted yet. Ice under the bridge was forcing water up and around the bridge, as far up as the hydrangea bush. Austin heroically jumped into the stream and tried to break up some of the ice but the pressure of the water against the boards on the side of the bridge were too much, a few minutes later they buckled and brought the roof down. Now the rain has changed to snow, and the expected 10-12 inches of heavy wet snow will probably destroy what's left of it.

Usually I love living on a quaint Vermont farm but today I kinda wish I lived in a condo.

Ski Buddies

I haven't blogged much about skiing this season but we've been going pretty much every Saturday and we're all getting pretty good. (Mom might even venture beyond the green runs, someday!) One of the things that's made skiing fun this year is we've been trying to coordinate schedules so we can ski with some "ski buddies." Lucy's friend Tess and her family are especially fun to meet on the mountain. Lucy and Tess ride the lift together and race each other down the hill. Sometimes Austin takes the girls up the Green Mountain Express quad to the top of the mountain so they can use their skiing skills on the blue runs.
Lucy and Tess taking a ski break in the lodge. Give Lucy some fries with massive amounts of ketchup and she's good to go for hours more.


Gavin is my ski buddy. We ride up the ski lift together, watching the skiers and boarders doing tricks on the Riemergasse freestyle terrain below and munching Sour Patch Kids. Gavin insists that we must eat on the ski lift because it is a "restaurant bar." (He refuses to be convinced that the signs requiring use of the "restraint bar" have anything to do with safety. He's getting to be a confident, if not always correct, reader.)

This is my standard view of Gavin as we go down our favorite Sugar Run trail. I make him be the leader because (1) he's faster than me, and I'm better at stopping. So I know I won't run over him but I'm not sure he won't come careening into me. And (2) he is still prone to occasional spectacular crashes that require Mom to come right behind him to clean out his goggles, put his skis back on, and give him a hug.

I love Sugar Run trail. It's nice and long and easy and never crowded. Gavin is becoming very good at keeping his skis parallel in a turn. I'm working on it. A few more ski lessons probably wouldn't hurt. Especially since I don't think my ski buddy is going to want to stay on Sugar Run forever.