This was a big weekend at the Grootveld house. I skied Baldy on Saturday and got a feel for the mountain. Big. Steep. Fun! There is no bunny hill (that's what Dollar is for). I'm pretty sure I had more vert in before 11:00 than I usually get in a full day at Cooper.




View of Ketchum from the mountain.



I watched a 5 year do a back flip off a jump onto moguls.



They do 'ski days' as part of elementary school during the winter here. The mountain offers free lessons/lifts for the schools.



Holly was afraid she might break a leg and opted to stay home and watch the boy. Here he is doing his best Colonel Sanders impression. "So then, I drop the chicken bits into the fryer..." He likes his yogurt.


The big reason Holly didn't want to get hurt was that she had the annual Galena Benefit at Sun Valley lodge on Saturday afternoon/ night and was in charge of running the silent auction. If she was busy getting a cast, BCRD would have been up a creek. Cameron and her kids generously offered to take Bridger over night. He had a great time hanging out with Lola and Luma. And Holly and I worked well into the night at the Galena Benefit. The moneyed folks around Sun Valley certainly are a different crowd than we're used to!

Sunday, we slept in. Neither of us stirred a bit until 9:00. It was glorious. We went and got Bridger from Cameron's house... they didn't let us take him until we promised to let them have him again sometime soon. Her two little girls thought it was great fun to have a baby for the night!

After a late brunch with Bridger, we headed north.







Pretty sweet that this is our Sunday drive!

Bridger got to go for a wander on a plowed road to a ranger station. He walked probably 1/4 mile all by himself. He wanted to wander further, but we decided it was time to go, so we came home, had supper, and he crashed out.

So here is a peek into our house this week...

Monday. Since it was a holiday, the schools were closed and I had recess from school. It was set to be a 'Crazy Craft' day. I had gone into work on Sunday after church to cover all the tables with newspaper and gathered paint supplies from the art room and transported them to the Hub. Sunday night I had made a big batch of home made air dry clay. Anyway, Monday. I went to work early in the morning and waited for the children to arrive. We had 3 children come, when normally we have 30. Most parents had the day off too. I am not used to having the majority of the population having a day off on MLK Jr. day. It was disappointing. I was going to cancel the day and send the kids home, since we were going to loose money staffing the Hub, but my boss said it was fine to be at a loss for the day. I ended up having one staff come in and we brought the kids to main street shopping, then walked to get ice cream, and took a bus back to the Hub. That night Eric switched oil on both the vehicles and fixed the starter and came home around 10 pm after I had got Bridger down for the night.

Tuesday. Bridger and I left first thing in the morning and drove down to Hailey for a Bible study at our church. It went from 9-12 and then I drove him back up to Ketchum quickly and dropped him off at daycare. I went home quick to change and rushed back to Hailey for work. We had a nice quite evening.

Wednesday. A big day for everyone. Bridger and I completely cleaned the house in the morning. Eric had a big board meeting, a meeting in Hailey, and then went and got Bridger from Day care in Ketchum. We had supper together and then Eric went back to Hailey for a PTA meeting. He came home after 9 and after Bridger had gone to bed.

Thursday. This morning I am working at home. We were going to go to 'indoor gym' for Bridger at the BCRD, but Bridger told me he would rather take a nap. So he is napping and I was working on a bunch of different projects I have going on and decided to take a break to blog. We have a lot of people ask what our week looks like and this is about it.

During the weekend we like to have fun as a family. Next weekend Eric and I are volunteering at the Galena Benefit at Galena lodge. It is a really formal occasion and we are going to be taking care of the silent auction. That day we are also planning to go skiing at Baldy.


This past week I have started a bunch of new projects. We received a proposal from an employee at the middle school to start up an after school program for middle schoolers next school year. I need to decide how BCRD, myself, and our staff would be willing to be involved in this. The Fitworks area at BCRD is wanting to have a time on Tue/ Thurs to offer child care for children 0-5. I am putting things together to help my boss make a proposal to the Director of BCRD. The major project is Summer camp. I need to get some things nailed down by mid February. I am officially the Camp Director for the summer and it is a big undertaking. There will be 15-20 staff, 100+ kids everyday, major activities (river rafting, cave adventures, pump park, etc), a full production of Aladdin at the end of the summer, and I have never done this before. We need to have everything very thought out by the end of March as we will be having an open house for sign up.

The other major project started on Sunday. Our new church is planning to open a day care and has asked me to be a consultant as they go through the process of licensing and setting up the program. They had asked if I would be interested in employment with them, but at this point I am so committed to other things, I told them I would love to help in every way I can, but I don't want to commit to working there.

Eric is busy with lots of meetings with the public regarding the Woodside project. There is a lot of people really positive about the project, but the sidewalks are going to be put on land that many homeowner's consider 'their yard' even though it has always been owned by the city, and there is opposition in the respect.

Since Eric is getting busy, he is taking on less bus driving. Come spring he will be back to full time in the projects. It seems like he will be able to get 20-25 hours for the projects this summer, so we are beginning to think about if Eric will look for a second job at a bike shop like Power House or if we will keep Bridger in daycare part time and Eric stay home with Bridger 1/2 the day.

So, that is our week and a little window into our lives.

Backcountry Skiing

We decided to try our new skis out this weekend at Proctor and Ruud Mt. area. Daycare was offering a weekend ski day to watch Bridger. We decided for cost reasons we would backcountry ski this time. It was something that would be a new challenge and also an experience that we wanted to try.



The climb up was exerting, but actually went pretty well. It was about 45 min to an hour of constant climbing a steep grade. There was about 3' of base snow and every now and then we punched through and had to use extra energy climbing out. We wore our ski boots for the hike up- which if you know the way alpine boots feel walking for any kind of distance you can imagine what that is like. Once Holly was following Eric a little too closely. He feel backwards a little and the bottom edge of his ski hit her in the eye/cheek hard enough to knock her down and leave a mark. The brunt of the impact was luckily guarded by her sunglasses, which now has a mark in the middle of the lens and on the frame.





Once we made it to the top we had a picnic lunch right next to the world's first chair lift. The views were great, and it was exciting to see the distance and height that we had achieved.

As difficult as the climb up was, I think the ski down was more frustrating for us. There was so much powder that we had a lot of trouble keeping our skis from being buried under the snow. It was a slow time down. I know, we shouldn't complain about fresh powder or first tracks. Our bodies were already hurting from the climb and our legs were already tired, so trying to direct the skis in that amount of snow was challenging.

It was nice have the mountain to ourselves. If anyone was watching they would be amused at our pace down the mountain. We haven't skied in 4 years, so I think we were a little over enthusiastic about how easy it was going to be to jump back into skiing. I don't think our skills are quite what they were before. Hopefully we can regain muscle memory and skill in the next couple of weeks, because we are planning to go skiing on Baldy then. We have decided that backcountry skiing will be something we will not attempt again until we are more comfortable skiing. All in all it was definitely a memorable day and an achievement we are both proud of. :)

Idaho Christmas

We celebrated our first Christmas in Idaho this year. After we returned from Iowa, we set out to replace the 'Charlie Brown' Christmas tree we had before our trip with a new one.



It had snowed quite a bit since we had left and it was a bit of a challenge since we couldn't get as far in the wilderness of Sawtooth National Forest. As a matter of fact we only got about 200 ft past were the plow had stopped before the Cruiser found itself stuck in about 3 feet of snow.


Eric dug, and dug, and dug, and crawled under the truck and dug some more and eventually was able to get us out.


That day we saw a ton of elk.


Finally we found our tree.

We were determined to start 'new holiday traditions' this year, but Holly was inconsiderate enough to be sick every half an hour on Christmas Eve which put a damper on the day. By 4 she was feeling well enough to be up and around, so we decided to go to continue on with our plans and went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and to the torch light parade down Dollar mountain.



The next day went much better. Bridger was delighted to see that Santa had come and apparently he had been a VERY good little boy this year. His favorite Santa gift was set up on the living room floor. It was a mat with roads, and a set of cars, trucks, and trains to play with on it. He got his first set of skis from Mom and Dad.



After Cinnamon Rolls and a big breakfast we headed up to Galena Lodge for snowshoeing. This will definitely be a Christmas day tradition. We took Cowboy Cabin Trail and Valley View. There was quite a bit of climbing, but the view was worth it!





Coming down we really were walking in a winter wonderland. The trees were still blanketed with snow, and the woods were absolutely silent. The snow created tunnels through the trees in places, and went along a mountain stream. It was really neat.


Bridger tried his skis out on the groomed nordic trail.

For Holly's Birthday we drove to Stanley.




We had a great supper-- Baby back pork ribs, corn bread, and sweet potatoes.

On New Years we decided to stay in. Ketchum is crazy busy, and it was super cold. Side note: we saw Arnold Schwarzeneggar three times over the New Year's holiday. We rearranged and decorated Bridger's room and watched movies. Finally, Sunday we had gone stir crazy so we went to breakfast and then went for a drive.




We let Bridger loose and Peyton followed. About 15 miles from our cabin is one of many roads leading nowhere this time of year (or a pile of snow where the plow stops). We decided to go to the last stretch of that type of road and walk for a while.


We let Bridger roam free with out worry of cars, wandering off the road, or eating rocks. Everyone had a glorious time.


Happy boy.


This is Ghost Rider requesting a flyby.


Eric 'skiing' Bridger.


Bed time snack after a long day.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!