It was very fun to see Aunt Barb & Uncle Doug's family get together for such a fun event. Jeremy & Sandy & family came up from California and Kip & Amy & family came up from St. George. Only Eric was missing. Yummy, yummy lunch at Tom & Chanelle's house.
I didn't take any pictures with my camera, so you'll have to check on Tom & Chanelle's blog for pictures. Thanks for letting me participate in your day Carson!
Afterwards, we went to the Jordan River Temple for Grandma & Granddad to participate in Tammy's endowment. My recommend is expired (oops), so I spent a couple hours in the sun listening to the BYU v. UofU basketball game and trying to learn to knit. I'm getting pretty good, but I'm still frustrated at the 'knit' stitch... With five minutes left in the game & and BYU ahead by a small margin, my car battery died. I'd been sitting with the radio on & Granddad's GPS plugged in for a couple hours. Luckily, temple security has jumper cables. Uncle Glen & Granddad & the security guy rescued me and got the car started while I took a few pictures for Tammy & Brett.
I'm including a trio of my favorites. They're so happy together & I look forward to taking more pictures at their wedding and reception next weekend.
P.S. BYU won the game!
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MEANWHILE...
We signed James up for the Big LePowSki! It was a fundraiser for the Billy Poole Fund and one of the sponsors is Backcountry.com. For less than the price of a regular day lift ticket at Brighton, James got a lift ticket and two clinics and lunch and a hat and a bunch of stickers and a bottle opener and an autographed poster and was able to mingle with professional big mountain skiers. He loved it! It actually started on Thursday night with some ski films - we didn't go to that.
Friday night was the mandatory pre-registration with Meet The Athletes. We talked to a bunch of people - including Chris Davenport who would be doing a slide show on some of his adventures up at Alta on Monday night. James also met the Backcountry.com guy who works with the athletes and getting their links on the websites. I didn't know that Backcountry.com has a Pro Team, but it was fun to meet some of them.
On Saturday, James' morning clinic was with Chris Davenport and was about the basics of backcountry skiing - safety, picking lines, etc. James enjoyed skiing with a small group of people, getting skiing tips, and being the 2nd best in the group (only behind Chris)!
Chris Davenport & James at Brighton -
James now has Chris' autograph on his Survival ski jacket.
At lunch, James text'd me that it was sunny & warm & he wished I was there. I'm keeping him!
In the afternoon, James skied in a How to Huck Cliffs clinic. I guess the conditions weren't too friendly toward cliff jumping (very firm), but he still picked up some pointers.
Saturday night was a party / auction / raffle / fundraiser event. James went for an hour-or-so and did a little more mingling with the athletes.
Monday - March 2, 2009 - Chris Davenport was at Alta Ski Resort giving a presentation about one of his projects - Ski the 14ers. There are 54 mountain peaks in Colorado over 14,000 feet, and in one calendar year, he hiked & and then skied them all. He completed that project in January 2007, so we saw pictures of that adventure & then pictures from first descents on Denali and in Antarctica that he's done since.
It was a pretty relaxed event. Our Lady of the Snows Center was full of chairs & full of people. James even chatted with the guy from Backcountry.com again after the slide show (the one who works with their pro-athletes). The guy said he saw James skiing and was impressed and would drop by the warehouse and say "Hi" sometime. We were impressed he remembered meeting James, but I'm not surprised that James is impressive while skiing!
James is so jealous of Chris' goggle tan!