Jammin' Janowicz: January 2009

Monday, January 26, 2009

Winterous Delightfulnous

We've had a nice January thaw here in Vernal,

until last night...

This morning it took me about 45 minutes just to get out of my driveway. Mike had already left and it had snowed a lot more. Needless to say, I was late to work. As soon as I arrived they told me that they had decided to close all the schools and send the kids home at 1:00. Plus just before I made it to work Mike called and said they were done for the day.

Guess I shouldn't have tried so hard to get out of my driveway.

The snow covered canyon is beautiful!

and hey Dad, today I played with a cat....

Ya kiddin' me? You thought I played with that cat?!?!?

(this cat thinks he's my friend, but I'm not his. if you can't tell, I don't do cats. but he sits outside our kitchen window and watches us all the time)

but....

This is the cat I played with!

(the bob kind)

Holy buckets, talk about fun!

Mike says he can now get me a job with him due to my new found skills of being a Heavy Equipment Operator

But talk about multi-task operating...both feet having a pedal and both pedals doing two functions and both hands having a joystick each to drive forward, backward and in circles...oh what fun!

Mike drove the tractor around and let me have the bobcat :)

Big Blue was our snow meter

Mike's turn in the bobcat

Monday, January 19, 2009

If at first you don't succeed...don't try again :)

On Saturday we attempted to go caving with a couple of our friends.
We started off the day by driving up the mountain in separate cars. We reached the turn off for the caves. This road was snow covered, but packed down, so we decided to go for it.

As you can see both cars got stuck.

Luckily we were both prepared with small snow shovels for our car

(thanks mom and dad!)

We were able to turn around...but our friends didn't want to take that chance. So they backed down once they got moving.

Once we were unstuck we decided to go back to our place to get Big Blue, our truck. We loaded some logs into the back to weigh him down...and then had to push him out of the backyard :)

Just our luck! We could not get Big Blue unstuck so the guys put the chains on.
Once Big Blue was free, we threw all our equipment into the back and crammed 4 of us into the cab! We checked out a map we had and decided to take a "shortcut" up a different canyon. It would have been a shortcut if the gate at the top of this mountain had been OPEN! But no....it was locked.

We decided to go back up the first canyon (where we had to push our cars out). We arrived there and were just about to take off up the snowy road when a guy came toward us waving his hands. He told us (kinda nicely, but not really) that the road was closed to vehicles and we would get a big ticket if we went up that way and were caught. He said it was only for snowmobiles. Then he said there were a couple of cars up here earlier that were stuck and they left some big ruts...ooops, that was us :) but of course we didn't tell him!!! There were no signs posted so we really didn't know. At that point we gave up on trying to get to the caves. We did not want to hike 5+ miles in to get to them. Three strikes and we were out.
So we ate lunch.

Mike, Aub, Drew & Darrah

As we were on our drive home contemplating on what to attempt next, Drew spotted this mountain off in the distance. His friend had told him that you could rappel off of it.

So we found the turn off and the guys put the chains on again. We did not get stuck on this snowy road, thanks to the chains!

We hiked up the back side that was dry.

This was our view from the top. Steinaker Lake is in the center, off in the distance. There were lots of people ice fishing on it.

Notice tiny Big Blue on the snowy road

Getting the equipment hooked up

Rappelling!

It was about a 200 foot rappel!

There is Mike

After rappelling we went shooting...pics to come

I guess the morals of this particular story are:

If at first you don't succeed...don't try again...go do something different.

Or...this may have been an answer to prayers because I wasn't looking forward to hanging out in that cave! :) Even though we did plan another day to try again...

Get chains, they do a truck good.

The End

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Christmas Tree Hunt

I've been trying to catch up on some blogging, so there are a couple of posts below this one and hopefully more to come soon.

Mike and I went to Kaye and Jerry's for Thanksgiving this year! I have missed going out there for Thanksgiving in the past.

The day after Thanksgiving we went on the traditional Christmas tree hunt!

Everyone is getting ready to head out...

We hiked around with Dan &Trudy & fam,

they took us up to a cool, huge sinkhole.

Mike kept threatening to walk across this log over the sinkhole,

but I wouldn't let him...

obvious reasons, I needed someone to haul our tree back to the truck!

We spotted the "perfect" tree across the sinkhole. Of course those kind of trees are hard to come by...once we got to it we found that it had been growing right next to another tree and was missing part of it's back side. But the front side was perfect! And once placed against a wall, no one would ever know...

Found it!

Pull out the saw!

Hauling the tree out

(I did help carry it for a while...)

Once we made it back to the trucks we had the traditional, yummy turkey on rolls!

snowshoers

We went snowshoeing in our backyard on Saturday. The snow was a bit too powdery, but it was still fun. This is the ridge we hiked up.

Turn around and smile!

Nana, thanks for the new jacket, I love it!There is the home we are living in (the basement)

and Big Blue is chillin' in the parking lot :)

half for you, half for me

Heidi, I am sure you can relate

I brought home a bunch of goodies from Enrichment (before Christmas...I'm slow posting) and cut them in half to make sure I would get a taste of each. :) The pretzel would have been tricky to cut, so we just took turns :)