Winter Wonderland -- McCall Idaho

Because of the ice storm last week that slammed OKC, we had to postpone our flight one day. By Wednesday night Bryan, Kim and I were on our way to Boise, Idaho, to meet up with some of the other Christensens. Kim's mom, Beth, was so nice to come get us at midnight and let us sleep at her house.

Travis, Joanna, Julie and Spencer picked us up the next morning in their Excursion and large enclosed trailer full of snowmobiles! It was so much fun talking to Joanna, Julie and Kim on the way up! All great women I love to give ideas from! We meet up with Dennis and Erica in Horseshoe Bend and kept driving thru McCall. It was fun driving through McCall because people were carving out their snow scenes for the annual Ice Festival! Here are a few pictures taken out the window as we drove by! The higher we went up the mountain, the more snow there was; until we couldn't go any further by car and we had to park the car and pull out the snowmobiles! Aaron, Barry, Grant and Maren meet us in the parking lot (they had come up the day before with Uncle Mike, Aunt Jill, Justin, Jamie and her two girls!)

Grant, Maren, Barry, Aaron

We all got suited up in our ski gear and took off up the road! The cabins were another 25 miles up the mountain!! It was pretty fun following each other up: nine snowmobiles in all; most of us rode double!The scenery was beautiful: the sun was shining, no wind, pine trees galore and a beautiful blanket of snow covering everything!

Kim, Julie, Joanna

Erica and Dennis

We soon turned off the main road and went a short distance up the mountain to find four nice new cabins! Uncle Mike and Aunt Jill share one cabin with Travis and Joanna and one with Justin! They are both really big and nice and completely furnished! The women in this family should know how to decorate!!

We brought in our gear and grabbed our swimming suits and were off to a natural HOT SPRING!! So, you drive 3 or 4 miles in the snow on a snowmobile, get to this little cabin, walk in to a WARM building, go behind a sheet and put on your swimming suit. Then you go back outside in the freezing cold and step into an OUTDOOR hot pool! It was weird and cool!! The pool was quite big and there was even a kiddie area and a BURNING hot tub next to it!! Travis kept picking up snow on the edges of the school and throwing them onto people! We divided into teams and had races across the pool - my team lost both times, probably because I am not a strong swimmer! We stood around the talked about the economy, getting a good job and fun times we remembered! Uncle Mike of course HAD to carry Kim and Maren out into the snow to Freeze them!!

After staying in the hot springs for a couple of hours, we headed back to the cabins for STEAK dinner, movie, music trivia, and QC (Quality Conversation)! Uncle Mike and Aunt Jill made the BEST steak dinner ever including shrimp and scallops, green salad, jello salad, and mashed potatoes!! It was to die for!! Uncle Mike had 50 songs all cued up for us to play boys against girls in music trivia! The boys won of course! He also had LOTS of questions written down and we talked about most of them. He would single one person out and ask them the question, then everyone could add to their comments. Uncle Mike KNOWS HOW TO THROW A PARTY!! We talked about all kinds of things: can you do too much for your calling, tithing, when and how is a good time to talk to your spouse about something very important to you, can you change your spouse, should you tell your friend if you find out their spouse is cheating on them, and would you rather have your husband's time or money were some of the things we talked about!! It was loads of fun and we laughed a lot and hopefully learned some things from each other!! We ended the night with homemade ice cream and cake and cookies! Some people watched another movie, some talked and some went to bed.

We all got up the next morning and had a fantastic yummy breakfast!! We then went riding around on our snowmobiles and worked our way back to the cars! Bryan wanted to stay longer, but most of the people had to get back! It was fun riding around in the snowy mountains on a snowmobile; by the way, this was my first time on a snowmobile, they reminded me of boats! Their engines are pretty loud and powerful! I did try driving one myself up the mountain on a small trail -- it was LOTS of fun!! We all had a fantastic, wonderful time being up at Uncle Mike's cabins! I know all of us LOVED it! Thank you so much for ALL THE FUN AND HARD WORK you put into making it memorable for us!! You are the best!!