Frozen

After my first winter was coming to a close, our good friend in Bozeman mentioned what a mild winter we experienced for our first winter in Montana. I felt quite lucky about this. Monday hit and I think I got a preview of what cold means here in Big Sky Country! I believe it's -5 out right now and our dog still feels it's walking weather. His walks yesterday consisted of me freezing my nose off at Bozeman Pond (which is well frozen over as you can imagine), and I couldn't fathom another walk of torture so ended up at Petsmart for his evening walk. We made a couple trips around the store and Moose enjoyed trick or treating, as everyone in the Bozeman store is very quick to hand out treats to dogs and Moose has picked up on this quickly. The minute someone in a store vest walks near, he immediately sits and wags his tail.

Last weekend before the extreme cold arrived, we were able to go on our first Ski outing to Bridger Bowl. It was really amazing - it had snowed 10 inches overnight and was still snowing when we got there. We got to experience some "wicked powder" as the local winter extreme sports fanatics would claim. Tyson went all out and tried his brother's snowboard for the first true snowboarding experience. The first time down, his board would not allow for any speed whatsoever, so he had to get a temporary wax (whatever that means) - and from that point on, he basically went straight down the hill fast. I was not so confident in trying snowboarding on my first time back to ski world since '97... So i rented some alpine skis and had a great time. There is something to be said about avoiding cross country paths with 12 inches of new snow.... I was following Tyson, but he got ahead of me and I though I was going the correct way, but ended up on this hill that had two ski tracks and otherwise untouched. It was AWESOME until at the bottom my options were cutting across to the main area via cross country - or going down another slope well out of my ski expertise... 20 minutes later, as i got to the end of the cross country road - I though my shoulders might explode! But fun nonetheless.

Finally - thanks to the many who called to check on us during the explosion in Bozeman last week. We were thankful to not be downtown during that tragedy. Tyson took a photo (above) from our favorite trail to walk moose on that overlooks the city the day of the incident. You can see the smoke from the building.