Well I think my adventures are temporarily on hold but here is a well crafted movie of the Maah Daah Hay adventure we all need on our biking lists.

Last weekend was the baby shower.  We are forever greatful to all of the friends and family that insist there is still hope for us and helped us prepare for the next chapter.  Kristin and Tamara, two of Beth's fellow classmates did an amazing job and the shower was reported to be a blast.  It was a wonderful weekend including swimming, lots of time with our niece Audrey, and an off road adventure in the torn up street in front of the house.  Thanks there goes to Jon for the generous use of his freshly washed vehicle for the fun.  We have no clue where any of that mud came from....   

Well the rain and snow finally looks like it headed north for the winter and the temperature this past weekend climbed from the 40's to 70's overnight.  We are loving it and to quell some of our cabin fever we decided to do a little more exploring.  With Beth temporarily out of the running for mtn biking (now 36 weeks pregnant) we decided to head for the national park since their silly rules against bicycles and dogs normally send us elsewhere.  We saw some cool new things including a sunken area filled with natural brick that was baked by a lightning ignited natural coal seam that burned underground for over twenty years.  Didn't know that was possible.  There were also lots of wild horses and buffalo, many with very young calves.  We concluded that the views in the park (with silly rules) were nice but no better than those we had seen previously along the Maah Daah Hey Trail where dogs go nut and bikes roll free.  Anyways beautiful day with a beautiful wife.  So far everything ls going well with the pregnancy and Beth is hoping he sits tight until she can finish up third year in another month... so we expect him any day.  Here are some pictures.  

With Beth working in Beulah this month I got the opportunity to bring the dogs along on my weekly commutes.  To make it more fun I was blessed with the opportunity to stay at a friends farm outside of town which the dogs love.  Max has been re honing his hunting instinct and Roo just wanders heading know-where in particular for hours at a time.  It is a bit like staying at my parents old cabin.  Luke warm bathing water, and lots of peace and quiet.  It has been a wonderful time and here are a couple pictures.  Last year at this time the cabin and barn were both still under several feet of water so I picked a perfect year. 

For Easter this year we joined Katie & Jon at a little golf & water park resort near in Ottertail MN.  I know you are wondering what we were doing near a golf coarse.  Don't worry, we played with Audrey while Katie and Jon golfed and then took the dogs out for a little ticky fun at a state park before we went to the water park for some high tech fun.   

I started the weekend by installing our new rocket box on the Subaru.  Thank you mom & dad.  They took pity on our upcoming  homelessness  and figured a little extra cargo space would be a good thing.  


Next we headed to Ottertail where the dogs kicked off the swimming season in a freshly thawed lake and hit up an old school playground.  You wouldn't believe how tall they used to make the twirly slides. 

The next morning while Katie & Jon golfed we took care of Audrey (Max helped) who has doubled in size since we saw her last and was wonderful.  She was not sure what we had in mind for the eggs but was good enough to put them all safely away in a cabinet drawer.  

That just leaves the water park.  Audrey took a few minutes to warm up to everything but ended up having a great time.  The rest of us did to and I rode my first water slide with touch screen controls.  The slide was filled with light and sound effects controlled by your selection on the screen at the start.  Kind of cool.  Beth even took a couple rides to ensure that our future little guy would be extra comfortable with x-stream sports :)  

Well I just got a hold of some good pictures from the downhill mountain bike race I won the past weekend at Huff Hills Ski Area.  It was a great event and tons of fun.  Sketchy as anything I have ever done but sketchy is fun right?  As long as you kept the speed up and didn't turn you were fine... but we know how that goes, just about everyone rag dolled at least once and I nearly tumbled into the spectators on at least two occasions.  The sections right before and right after the jumps were especially rutted so if you made it into the air straight you were half way there.  Anyway I got lucky and managed to link recoveries to get a clean first run.  The second one didn't go as well, unless I was being graded as a gymnast but the first run time held and I took hold the 1st place solid gold painted assortment of welded together bike parts.  It must have looked good because Beth (my personal an call ski patroller) asked if I was hurt when I made it to the finish.  This is what makes life so fun.  Great people and great event.  Can't wait to teach the little guy the ropes... just kidding Beth.

Well we decided we need to do a little more local exploring for my birthday.  As a result we headed a few miles north and discovered some more nice xc ski trails buried in snow like the rest of the state.  There is nothing like post holing to wear the dog out and nothing like cold fresh air and a ski to put the soul at peace.

Well today brought us confirmation of big news.  The 20 week ultrasound gave Beth and the Baby a clean bill of health and confirmed the earlier guess that we are going to be having a baby boy.  On a side note the tech independently confirmed that the little man was already excelling at his ski form and was seen during the ultrasound with his skis nicely crossed up.  See excellent foot positioning below. 

Believe it or not I am not talking about a long flat  run at SnowBowl, this is the real thing.  Having joined prior to becoming pregnant Beth returned from Christmas determined to get her required ski patrolling days in before she was too far along.  She has now made it and in the process we have found a fun little hill does in fact exist just south of Bismarck.  Huff Hills boasts a whopping 450ft of vertical and belive it or not was the site of a real avalanche this year.  See the crown in the center of the left most picture.  It was of coarse caused by the failure of a wind loaded cornice, lots of wind you know. 

On the plus side of all the driveway shoveling was the great snow conditions.  We are told that normal at Huff Hills is boiler-plate, but so far the conditions have been pretty good.  You do have to keep in mind where the wind does and doesn't deposit snow before you blindly hit jumps.  I rotated around on a couple blind 360's to find myself landing in lightly dusted grass.  Luckily rock is not plentiful here.  All in all much better than sitting on the couch, and some nice variety for our normal XC skiing.  Beth continues to make telemarking look easy.  

Here are a couple pictures of funny things we have notices in our brief ND ski careers.
- You bump your own chairs, the lifty stays warm inside the shack.
- Ski lessons are free and provided at the rope tow by the ski patrollers when available.
- In place of wimpy colored rope boundary fences are standard barbwire.  See the pictures of the fence and the tractor driving on the other side.
- I have been using my ticket bails upside down all these years?  Or have I?  See Picture.
- The last picture is of the patrol hut.  It is a retired FEMA trailer from the Grand Forks flood that is now located directly under the green lift.  Presumably so that patients can more easily drop in.   

Our return trip brought winter quickly back into perspective, all told at least 80% of our drive home was on some combination of slush, ice, and packed snow.  Luckily this year the wind didn't pick up until we were about an hour from home.  So we could at least see most of the time.  Just like last year we left the house with just a couple of inches of snow in the yard and returned to banks 6 feet high.  See picture one.  On the plus side the skiing around town is much improved although Roo is asking for stilts for her birthday.  So she can maneuver in the drifts like a deer instead of being continually high centered.

Back in Grafton the story wasn't much different with a dozen line workers shoveling 18 hours a day to bring some relief to the office roof trusses.  Every year we wait until they bend enough that ceiling tiles start falling down and get the shovels out.  Here are some pictures of the front of the building.  We had to employ a front loader to find the plant entrance doors that were completely buried.  Of coarse accross the street the snowmobile trail was almost bare.