In the midst of...

    Wowza! Four, five, six, months in between post'! That seems to be the lead in theme for our blog.  I could count the days in analytical fashion and regail on those days gone, but Ill try to be succinct in my rhetoric.
    As  the Montana spring lulls us with it's winter-spring-summer transition, it becomes easy to fill up the foreseeable future and without looking you find yourself quickly engulfed with planning and doing, followed by more planning and doing.  The days and weather are more than willing to accomodate, serving only to stoke the blaze of excitement,  and offer lingering daylight and warm, dry temperatures.  The mountains spring to life and reveal a new shade aided by their melting cloaks of white.  For Paige and I this is our moment!  Our intimacy with the hills grows fervent and an internal urge to experience more of each aspect of the world around us guides each moment we can spare. Each of us seeing, hearing, smelling, and fealing, these wonders in our own way but recognizing that the oppurtunity to share them adds only to heighten what we seek to gain.
     As Paige returns to school(August 28th) and I settle into a new rythmn, we smile in remembering the moments of this summer. Up, down, square and round it all deserves the frothy feeling of thanks we are overfilled with.  As usual, this post offers no real closure on this period of time in our lives, but instead provides a quick and settled gasp of air and chance to share our spirit and passions.  Tomorrow will be different than today and maybe even more so then three yesterdays, but what will be the same,  is our optimism for life and our anticipation of sharing it with all of you!

                                                      You should see what we saw!

Goodbye Spring!

Camping with the teachers

Casual mountain biking.

Pocatello, Idaho

Steamboat Peak. Bighorn Mts, Wyoming.

Crewing for Foote enroute to a new course record at  the Bighorn 100.

Paddleboarding on the Clearwater.

Paige is a speck, descending Fisher Peak. Swan Range, Montana.

Mildly techy terrain on Fisher Peak.

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Foote, Wolfe, and Scout on the Ptarmigan Ridge. Swan Range, Montana.

New inflatable paddleboard!

Bitterroots from Ward Mountain summit.

Pyramid Buttes. Bitterroot Range, Montana.

Big Dipper ice cream truck. Lots of Big Dipper this summer!

Scouting the Plain 100 course in Washington.

Family Olympics in Hoods Canal, Washington. Leadership theme.

Speech, speech, speech!

From above.

Ahh...Glacier.

More Glacier.

Paige nearing the summit of Baldy on the Bridger Ridge, Montana.

Anaconda-Pintler Range, Montana.

Bitterroot Range, Montana.

See you soon!

 

   It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.  ~Charles Dickens

      Ahhhhh.  Calendar Spring has arrived and carried Paige and I out of our late winter, blog hibernation.  In the Northern Rockies the first few weeks, or even couple months, of "official" Spring is a period of waxing and waning in which Mother Nature and Old Man Winter attempt to continue their, all too old, four month relationship.  Brief periods of separation lead to patches of sunny skies, rising temps, and melting snow, lending a hope of the season to come.  These separations don't last long though and before too much morale is built the two powerful world shapers reunite and provide us with the fruits of their love, more snow and cold.  Ahhh, or nahhhh.  As daunting as this back and forth can be, subtle signs of the longer days and warmer nights are all around, reminding us the growing season, physically, naturally, and spiritually has begun.
     We are kicking off our season in the finest fashion we know...road trip!  This coming Friday Paige and I are loading up the Pilot with everything we need for five days of boot scootin, and heading west to Bend and beyond.  Along the way we will stop in Kenniwick, Washington to take part in the second Badger Mountain Challenge.  I will be running in the 50k and Paige Ford makes her return to the competitive NW running scene by tackling the 15k.  It should be a good time and we are both excited to stretch our legs and enjoy a day on the dirt.  After we flush our legs on the rolling hills we will turn SW and land in Bend, Oregon.  Our trip to Bend has multiple motivations and we eagerly anticipate catching the "vibe" of this hip Oregon town, that may, or may not be a large part of our futures.  Undoubtedly, the most enjoyable time of the trip will be the days spent in Sun River with the Ford Clan(minus the too cool for school, Mexican trippers)(just jealous).  These are things we hope for our trip; safe travel, cheaper gas, good food, reggae music, tropical drinks, SUN, dry weather, tennis, golf, lounging, running, hiking, biking, acquainting, reuniting, jamming, dancing, starry nights, laughs, gin and tonics, micro brewed beer, short sleeves, sunglasses, red meat, pitch, Yahtzee, and most importantly, the unexpected!

       Two months is too much reflection for one blog post so I will leave you with a pictorial track of our late winter happenings.

Sunny Winter Walk in Eugene

Hug pile!

Happy Birthday MOM, SURPRISE!

Are we there yet?

East Fork Rock Creek Cabin pond hockey.

Cabin

MOOSE! (look real hard in the middle)

Cabin life

Teacher conference in Helena

Boyfriend/Girlfriend

Dog sitting

All to myself!

Tight roping on University Mountain

Univ Mt sunshine

Going up

2012 SPAMS(Spin Against Multiple Sclerosis)

Thank you, snow storm!!

After a WONDERFUL, long weekend with the Ruby Jewels in New Orleans, filled with lots of delicious food, walks in the sunshine, laughter, and quality time spent with 3 amazing friends, I was preparing myself for a tiring (we didn't sleep very much in NOLA) and cold week at school.

The first day back, everybody in room 304 was a little sleepy and not quite ready for further exploration of multiplication and division! Somehow we all managed to make it through the day and that is when we got the first wind of a huge snowstorm heading our direction. Instantly thoughts of school being cancelled popped into every teacher's mind in the Missoula area, but I did not let it get the best of me because I have been told that snow days do not happen very often here! In Oregon, if 1 snowflake fell from the sky, school was cancelled. Waking up to a little snow on Wednesday, I got excited and was waiting for a call from the district, saying school was cancelled, no such luck! It did, however, snow all day on Wednesday and into the night. We woke up Thursday morning (as Justin posted previously) to quite a few inches of snow. The call from the district came, with a message of a 2 hour delay for the students, teachers should report at regular time :( After digging my car out of the snow (thanks, Justin!) I drove very slowly to school preparing for some very excited 3rd graders! After half the staff had reported, we were called to the office, where we were told the district had decided to just cancel school for the day, since the weather report was not looking much better for the rest of the day! You might think there is a lot of excitement in the halls of an Elementary school on the last day of school, you should have heard it on this wintry day in January! What was I going to do with this free day.....
     Justin and I decided to do our first snowshoe adventure of the season (it had been a very dry winter up until this point), we were both curious of how much snow was on Sentinel, so decided to head that
direction! (Side note: Justin had mentioned in his previous post that he ran a sluggish 49 minute time from our front door to the top of Sentinel.  That is NOT sluggish, we have to keep in mind "Justin time"! Most of you can probably recall hiking the "M", when you have come to visit, running Sentinel, does not mean stopping at the "M", it ends up being a 2 1/2 mile run with 2,000 feet of elevation gain, which most people could not dream of doing in 49 minutes!) Anyways, we strapped on our snowshoes and headed up the left side of Sentinel, where we were greeted with 6-10 inches of untouched snow! With Justin breaking trail up the North ridge, we made it 3/4 of the way up Sentinel when we (I) decided we should make a nice long loop out of the hike, instead of heading straight up! It continued to snow during our hike, at one point, I turned to look back out over Missoula and could only see white clouds and bit and pieces of buildings below. 

Wintry Missoula

     We continued with our hike through tons of untouched, beautiful snow! I had just been telling Justin how I wanted to experience a time when it would start to snow and just keep snowing for a long period of time, I got my wish!! It continued to snow all day and into the night.  Late Thursday afternoon all the Lowell teachers were texting back and forth, placing bets on whether we would have school on Friday or not.  No one wanting to get their hopes up for another snow day, but the call came, announcing the school closures for Friday! So, after preparing to have a long tiring week at work, we were pleasantly surprised to have a 4 day weekend!

Enjoying the snowy day!

The black dot is Justin, wayyyy ahead of me!

     Now, with another free day ahead of us, we were trying to figure out what snow filled activity would fill our day on Friday! We decided another snowshoe adventure would  be fun! We got friends Amy, Mary and Zeke to join us on a Marshall Canyon trek.  After getting stuck twice in our alley way, one time having to get pulled by a very nice man with a rope and Chevy 2500, we made it up to Marshall.  Where we got to see the dark clouds part ways to blue sky! Justin led us on another beautiful hike up and around Marshall.  

Mary and Zeke

View from Marshall, overlooking East Missoula

Amy (Willa in background)

Justin, breaking trail

Fog creeping in around us

The crew, enjoying a much deserved cold one after the hike!

     After an adventure filled weekend, I just have to say thank you to the snow storm for providing Missoula with a winter wonderland!!