Our Christmas Trip to Utah - Part 2: Outdoor Fun!

We had a lot of fun outside while we were on our visit to Utah this winter.  The valley didn't get too much snow, but the day that it did snow, the twins went outside and took full advantage.

Sophie and Lexa playing in the snow.

Sisters!

Our big outdoor adventure was taking the girls skiing at Sundance on Wednesday, December 18 - the day after our Utah Jazz adventure.  It was the second part of Christmas adventures for the girls.  Yulia found good deals on the tickets and equipment.  We thought a lot about my Dad since it was his favorite place to ski.  Our girls never got the chance to ski with him, which is one of our regrets.

I don't ski - I missed it as a teenager and just don't have a love of fast things (unlike my speed demon wife).  The girls all got their gear and we got them on the slopes and I spent a lovely day reading and typing at the lodge.

The girls took to skiing like ducks to water.  They had been night skiing two years earlier when we visited and they picked right up.  They spent two hours skiing, took a short break to eat lunch, and then skied until 3:30 when it was time to come off the slopes and turn in the gear.  It was a really perfect day - not too cold, a small cloud cover so it wasn't too bright, and snow that was wet, cold, and groomed.

Getting skied up and heading to the lift.

Mama and the twins heading up for a run.

Riding the lift.

The view from the lift toward Timpanogas mountain.

Cool customers!

Mama is a happy skier!

Twins going down the slope.

Beautiful mountains!

Mama and Nika

Mama and Lina

Lina coming down the mountain.

Nika coming in fast!

Nika and Lina spent a lot of time on their own!!! Ladies love skiing.

Sophie, Lina, and Nika going up on the chairlift.

We really had a nice time.  We didn't give a lot of presents for Christmas, but we had some wonderful experiences and adventures.  

Utah Trip Christmas 2017 Part 5 - Winter fun

When we told our kids that we’ll be spending Christmas in Utah, they got really excited because they always wanted to try downhill skiing. While Opa was alive, he took most of his grandkids skiing (he was a big ski junky) but our kids were too little at first, and then he was too sick. I myself wanted to go skiing too. I grew up doing all kinds of winter activities and sports (sledding, ice skating, cross country skiing) and I fell in love with downhill skiing 16 years ago when a friend of mine took me up to Beaver Mountain in northern Utah. It was also 16 years ago when I last skied. So, naturally, my only Christmas wish this year was to go skiing!

Well, as far as I could remember Utah always had an abundance of snow by Christmas. But this year the adversary was really up to no good! It wasn’t just that there was now snow on the ground, there was no snow in the mountains, and with the abundance of sunshine and the temperatures well above freezing, it felt like April! I am sure there were people out there praying very hard for such weather conditions, and their faith was a lot stronger than mine!

But then a miracle happened!  Mican and Roger invited us to come to his brother’s ward’s night ski party at … Beaver Mountain! Northern Utah got a lot of snow on Christmas Eve, and the temperatures were perfect 20-23 F (-5-7C) up in the mountains. Of course, I couldn’t pass such a wonderful opportunity, and so we cooked up a plan to go visit Spencer’s sister Suzette and her family in Brigham City for a couple of days, and then take a trip up to Beaver Mountain from there.

The girls had so much fun with their cousins, Aaron and Sam! They really wanted to go sledding, so one morning Suzette and I took them to one small hill where there was a little bit of snow left. And even though the snow was very sticky and wet, the kids spent an hour riding their sleds while the family dog Jade spent an hour chasing them down the hill (she was wrecked and was just a big black blob in the middle of the room for the next 30 hours).

Kids having a chess tournament.

Brigham City had some snow!

Jade trying to save Sophie

Lexa

 

Jade is ready for the rescue mission!

I love Jade's "crazy" eyes in this picture! She really thinks she is saving the poor child. 

I am not sure what is going on here.

Sam

There was a huge snowman at the bottom of the hill with whom the youngest three struck up an immediate friendship.

Ahh, the forbidden taste of the snow!

Aaron

And, of course, hot chocolate afterwards! Nothing could be better!

The next day we Suzette took us to the train museum in Ogden but it was unexpectedly closed due to some “water related difficulties”. So we went to the Children’s Museum. The last time our girls visited a Children’s Museum was when we lived in Iowa 5 years ago, so we thought it might be interesting for them. Well, at the beginning the oldest two (Nika and Aaron who are both 12) acted like they left childhood behind 20 years ago ... until they found a school room! Then I guess their memory was refreshed and they found joy in just being kids!

Samuel and the twins are picking "groceries".

Nika and Lina continuing with their chess tournament they started the day before. 

The cowboys!

It was just a second week of our winter school break, and all of the kids were so excited to play school! Nika of course assigned herself to be a teacher!

Happy students!

 That same evening we met Max Acevedo (our second cousin) and went up to Beaver mountain for night skiing. Spencer, Mican, and her husband Roger didn’t ski for various reasons but the rest of us had a blast. Our girls have never been downhill skiing before, so the first thing I had to teach them was how to stop and to fall if necessary on the bunny hill. Lexa needed a little more practice, so I was giving her more instruction, but when I looked around, the three others were nowhere to be seen! Then I looked at the chairlift some 300 yards away and caught a glimpse of Sophie getting onto it all by herself! I quickly skied down to the lift and just in time before she disappeared up the mountain, yelled to her to wait for me at the top. When Lexa and I got to the top, we found the three other girls and Max (who also was skiing for the first time) waiting for us. They didn’t learn yet how to stop properly but they were ready to take on the big mountain! I told them to follow me praying that they all come out of this alive! They did! And they had a blast doing it! I guess being figure skaters (and for Max, being a roller skater) helped them to pick up skiing naturally. For the next 3 hours Nika and Lina skied with their Mayo cousins, and Max, the twins, and I stuck together going on all of the available runs. By the end we could barely stand on our feet but we had a great time with each other. My Christmas wish came true!

Arriving at the Beaver Mountain Ski Resort. The sun just started to go down.

Ready to go!

Sophie and Lexa trying to figure out how to move forward.

Max, Lexa, Nika, I, Rocky, and Emma at the end of our ski adventure (Lina and Sophie went on one more run)

Sophie is quiet a sight! She had fallen down on her face during one of her last runs and had a bloody nose but decided to ski some more. She had to be rescued by her Papa after her very last run because she got stuck in the deep snow and had no strength to pull herself out!  

Our Trip to Shchuchinsk (The Switzerland of Kazakhstan)

A few hundred kilometers to the northwest of Astana is a region of hills, lakes, and forests that many call the "Switzerland of Kazakhstan."  The most famous lake and town in the area is Burabay, but the largest town and the rail station is in the town of Shchuchinsk - which is named after a lake that is in the area.  We decided to visit the area in the week after New Year.  We went with our friends from church and the university - the Stices.

We met at the train station on Tuesday morning at around 10:30.  Our train arrived just then and we loaded on.  The train was coming from somewhere else and the seats where we were sitting for our 3 hour and 15 minute train ride had been occupied and were quite dirty.  The Stices have two fourteen year old daughters that they adopted from Kazakhstan about 12 years ago.  Our girls love them and really look up to them.  They had a great time laughing and talking and playing games on the way.  The adults talked as well.

Girls having fun on the train.

When we arrived in town, we took two taxis to our hotel - the Park House - which was located in the National Forest on the other side of the lake from town.  The hotel had been built just a year or two ago and was nice.  The rooms were small, but the beds were comfortable.  We checked in and then the girls spent the afternoon sledding on the ice slide hill that was right outside of the lobby.

Park House Hotel

This is the view from the top floor of our hotel. You can see the lake a little bit.

Just gorgeous!

Sliding hill right outside of the lobby

About ready to be pushed down

Tired but happy

Teamwork!

Train!

We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant to check it out.  It turned out that the food at the restaurant was good and very affordable, so we ended up eating there the entire time that we stayed.

Kids' table! They fell in love with the place!

The six of them also spent a lot of time playing card games at the end of each day.

Wednesday morning after our complimentary breakfast (which was also good), we took some taxis to the big resort hotel the Rixos that is just a few miles down the road.  They have a "Santa Village/Lapland" area that is a tourist area.  We went in and did a tour of Santa's house.  The tour was kind of like "it's a small world" at Disneyland, but without the boats, singing, and animatronics.  The tour went through India, Egypt, London, Paris, Astana, and finally Santa's house.  The kids took pictures with Santa and then wrote letters to Santa (we had them write thank you notes) and got glitter tattoos.

The quality of the pictures isn't the best because Yulia forgot her camera that day, and all of the pictures were taken with my phone.

Writing "Thank you" letters to Santa.

We also signed up to take a reindeer sled ride.  We walked out to where that was located.  There were three little reindeer tied to a sleigh.  Our four girls went, with the driver going along. He let me "drive" the reindeer with Yulia.  That consisted of me poking them with a long stick every once in a while so that they would remember to go - they knew where to go on their own since it was a circle.  There were also dog sled rides, snowmobile and four-wheeler rental, and other activities.  We signed up to go horseback riding.  We had to wait until they were ready and a van was available.  We were picked up and driven to the outskirts of Shchuchinsk to a horse farm.

Girls riding the reindeer sleigh

Everyone, including our 7 year old twins, got to ride on their own horse.  We went on a 5 km trail out in the forest and back to the farm.  The ride was beautiful - the area really is nice.  It is much different from the steppe around Astana (which also has a beauty to it).  The snow was on the ground and frosting the pine trees and it looked like something out of a postcard.  There was a group of four German tourists who were riding off the trail and faster than us, but we just had a nice walk/trot ride through the forest which lasted about 40 minutes.  The total cost was about 8 dollars per person, and it was very much worth it.

Nika got on her horse first. Everybody else is still waiting.

The camel in with the horses - he'll be important later.

Waiting for our horses to be saddled.

Lexa is getting her stirrups adjusted. The dark brown horse is Sophie's.

Yulia on her horse with German "cowboys" in the background. Unfortunately we do not have any pictures of our ride through the forest for the same reason: Yulia forgot her fancy camera. So, you will just have to believe us that it was beautiful scenery. 

When we arrived back at the farm and dismounted, one of the "cowboys" asked us if the kids wanted to ride a camel.  We had seen a large Bactrian (two-humped) camel behind the horse pens when we arrived.  The cost was about $1.60 for each of the girls, so all six of the girls took a trip around the yard on the camel and had a great time.

Lina and Lexa on the camel.

Taking a camel ride.

We had a nice big dinner at the end of the night back at our hotel.

Our last full day at the Park House was nice and quiet.  After breakfast the kids spent the morning sledding on the hill.  We had a nice late lunch and then went out and rented skis (about 50 yards from the lobby) and spent an hour and a half skiing on the trails through the forest. It was the first time any of our girls had skied, and they all did great.  My skis were a bit short and my boots a bit small (I'm bigger than the median Kazakhstani), but we all had a great time.  We had one last nice dinner that evening.

Our happy Lexa

I think kids spent about 8 hours just sledding in three days that we were there.

More sledding

Beautiful trees

Beautiful nature

Lexa trying to figure out how to move on skis

Nika got the hang of it on her first try.

Sophie was a good sport even though her ski poles were too long for her.

Lina did a lot of this in the beginning and was very upset when her mom took her pictures. That didn't stop Yulia though!

Mountain Man

Sophie with papa

Sophie

Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast and then checked out of the hotel.  We took the train back to Astana and arrived back at our house on campus by about 4:00 p.m.

Riding a taxi from our hotel to the train station through the forest.

Ready to get on the train.

We had a very nice mini vacation.  We were glad that we got to see another part of Kazakhstan and to spend time doing some winter sports.  The horse riding was definitely the highlight for everyone (when we include the camel ride as part of that experience), but the whole retreat was great.  Now we want to go back in the summer and hike and swim in the lake.