The Story of The Eagle Huntress

by Sasha

We went to the Sundance Film Festival and it had a movie. It was called The Eagle Huntress. It was about a girl who wanted to learn to hunt with eagles. When she learned pretty good there was a festival and she won the first prize. They were seeing how fast their eagles could go.

The girl from the movie and her father came to the movie. She was born in Kazakhstan and we took a picture with her and they realized I had the sign of Kazakhstan on my dress and they realized I was born in Kazakhstan.

I liked seeing them and I liked The Eagle Huntress.

[Editor's (Mom's) note: technically Alshupan (the heroine of the movie) is Kazakh and lives in western Mongolia, but we won't split hairs with the 8-year-old]

Staycation

It's January. It's Utah. It's snowing. It must be time for the annual Staycation!

We hit upon the idea a few years ago while on an out-of-state ski vacation. The logic went like this: Utah is awesome. Utah has awesome snow. Utah is, you know, in our backyard. And there are a ton of awesome resorts in Utah and we never have time to visit them all - so why not just vacation in Utah?!?

So far, we've done staycations at PowMow, Brian Head and Eagle Point, and Park City. So this year we headed to Solitude and Brighton!

It was a beautiful weekend - great skiing, great family, great snow. And, of course, we spent the whole weekend chasing our little rippers down all the black diamonds. We have some hard core little skiers!

We spent Saturday and Sunday skiing at Brighton because Sasha was racing in her first big race of the year! She felt great about her skiing and she looked darn snazzy in her race suit so, yeah, it was a super successful race.

Like father...

...like daughter

We stayed in the Solitude Village, which meant there was snow, pizza, a heated pool, and ice skating right outside our front door. We were made for ski in ski out living.

This is the proud face of a boy who just wore his daddy's heads up display goggles and hit a 56 mph top speed. No children or bystanders were harmed.

I think mountain life agrees with us. If anybody has a ski condo or home that they're bored with and want to give us, we are currently entertaining offers.

Ben and Mom Nordic Racing

hi this is Ben writing this(i assume since you are reading this family blog post that you know who i am) i did a race up at mountain dell (me and my mom had a little wager we would divide our time by the number of ks in the race we did aka kilometer but that is a moth full so i will just say ks and the person with the smallest ratio of time to ks wins 5 dollars from the other)it was not a short race well the race was the same length as all my other races but it turned out i was still a wee bit sick i was sick the week before however i was according to me "fine" and also "recovered" but surprise surprise it turned out i only thought that i had recovered and buy the top of the first hill all of my "boundless energy" was gone. over to mom.

Jamie: As I was racing in the novice category, I was in the last group to start. That means that we started right behind the 70+ category (Nordic skiers age well!). Determined not to be outdone by 70-year-olds, I started strong and worked up a good sweat going up the initial hill only to see the little old ladies zipping by me on the downhill. It turns out that if you're racing on your 15-year-old backcountry cross country skis, you should really consider waxing them before the race.

Ben: so in by middle i was very annoyed seeing as every time i started going to the finish the core turned agin so i was going away from the finish arrrrrrrg why i was done after like the tenth of those such turns(i don't know how long it actually was it felt like that though) i wasn't going very fast at all but i was very determined so i did actually end in me beating my mom and getting 5$ so thats a good thing for me at least but on the next race my mom so... tune in nest week for another exciting episode of cross country ski race betting

Jamie: Yeah, so I ended up totally not being able to keep up with the 70-year-olds, but I did finish the race and with a smile on my face, so we'll consider that a victory. I echo Ben's frustration that the seemingly neverending series of loops toward and then away from the finish were a lot of mental anguish for this first-timer to take ("Home stretch" "Wait - why are the people in front of me turning away from the finish?" "Noooo it's another 1 k loop before I finish!") but I was glad for the experience. Next time I'll wax my skis, lose 20 pounds before the race, and totally win $5 off my 12-year-old kid.