New Year in Tahoe

What a weekend! What a new year! Since Jack had missed out on having a white Christmas, we decided to give him some snow for New Years, and headed up to the cabin we've rented in the Sierras this winter to ring in 2010 with some friends.

Jack's godfather Scott arrived for the weekend with one stated goal: to be in a blog-worthy photo. I think he has overachieved because I took about 300 photos and there are too many good ones to post. By some brilliant stroke of serendipity, godmother Julia was also in Tahoe for the new year, so we got to have a little godparent reunion, which was very special to me. And to Jack as well, I think-- even though he may not understand what very important people they are quite yet, he understands how neat it is to have someone's full attention and adoration, and basked in the glow of it all weekend.

Our friends Nick and Libby were up for the weeked, too, so I think Jack had the best doting-adult-to-kid ratio he has ever enjoyed. Nick and Libby are our foodie friends that bring out the epicure in us (meals with them are so enjoyable and extravagent that one often flows into the next before we've even left the table), and this weekend was no exception. Suffice to say, we ate well. Actually that's not sufficient. I also have to add that one of the meals involved an anise-and-chili rubbed pork shoulder that was slow roasted for 20 hours. It was as amazing as it sounds.

We did manage to squeeze some frolicking in the snow in between all that eating. Jack's first introduction to that powdery white stuff (other than the previous encounter through the windshield of a car stopped dead on the highway for three hours) was sledding. The backyard of the cabin featured a great big hill just begging for a tobbagen and a saucer, so we obliged. The adults had fun; Jack was somewhat traumatized. I think the sight of these otherwise very capable grown-ups slipping and falling and sliding down the hillside was disconcerting to him. He didn't understand that it wasn't provoking serious injury, even when we got up smiling. So he wailed, in only the way Jack can do when he's truly upset, every time someone went sliding. He was really worried about us! Poor little guy!

The next day we went snow-shoeing. There was much debate about whether it would be better to rent a sled with a little seat bolted in, to pull him along behind, or put him in a baby backpack, and it was decided that the latter was the better option. Which would've been fine except that mommy forgot the backpack. So we went with option C, carry the boy up the mountain. Good thing daddy has arms of steel! (We traded him back and forth like it was a relay, except that I was running 50s and Danny was running 1600s. That is what is called teamwork in a marriage.)

Jack enjoyed himself much more than the previous day, looking around in wonder at the great drifts of snow and the tracks the snowshoes left behind, exclaiming with big "oohs!" now and then to share his feelings with us. We climbed up to a stunning view of Lake Tahoe from Peak 7766, named for its elevation, but a very boring name, so we renamed it Meximuse Peak, in honor of the holiday born from a rather elaborately misspelled text message Julia had almost sent to her mother to wish her a happy new year. (Some people's mothers text, mom!) The six of us enjoyed celebrating our first Meximuse together and promised to do it again someday. I hope we do.

As an addendum, the blocks Jack got for Christmas from his aunt Alison were a big hit as well, maybe even more so among the adults than for Jack. Who would've ever guessed what a great late evening activity building blocks could be, constructing feats of architecture that would make Frank Lloyd Wright weep, creating new works of modern art, in front of a crackling fire?



(PS, as another addendum, Jack picked up his 9th state, driving around the lake to pick up his godmother. NEVADA!)