Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Valentine's Day Cousinfest

The forecast called for rain in the Bay and heavy snow in the mountains. It was going to be an ugly drive. It was exactly the kind of weekend we'd always said we'd opt out of Tahoe for. Except. Except that my sister-in-law and her family were coming up from LA and we don't see nearly enough of them. Cousin love and all.

And because I can no longer handle the guilt of yanking the kids from school for family fun time, we left Friday at 2:30p. Remember the ugly drive I mentioned previously? It was pretty ugly. It took us nearly twice as long as usual to get to the mountains but at least we got there in one piece. DOT did a good job metering cars and surprisingly, we didn't see any accidents. I give my husband a lot of credit for remaining calm during some pretty scary road conditions.

SIL and her entourage arrived four hours later, after 11 hours in the car. By the time they got to the Sierras, even 4WDs were required to have chains on. We don't even own chains for our SUV; if the roads are that bad then that's a clear sign to me that we should not be on the road!

And so the nonstop party began. My brother and SIL from the Bay came up, too, so we switched off watching the little kids while a subset of us skied / boarded in the storm. Other cousins were also up from LA and staying across the street from us at Plumpjack. I was suitably irritated that they blew off meeting up with us. This particular cousin is a first cousin, not a sixth-cousin removed or some such, as is our Rabbi.

On Sunday it was snowing too hard for all but expert skiers to hit the slopes so we lazed around, played in the snow and went for a dip in the outdoor hot spa. At some point I made a scavenger hunt for the cousins and assorted neighbors. It kept them occupied for nearly two hours and included: a picture of them all in the big chair in The Village, a carrot with green stem attached, pennies of each year that they were born. The picture at the very bottom of this post is the little kids in search of a pine cone, which was on the list.

In all the years we've skied at Tahoe, we've only been snowed in once. I thought this weekend might be the second time but we did, in fact, drive home Monday night in a storm, along with too many other people. In case you think I'm exaggerating, more than 3 feet of snow fell over the weekend.

We're home the next three weeks. If you find yourself absolutely miserable over my lack of new Tahoe content, feel free to read my past posts. Also, Paige and Celia blogged on Tahoe this weekend so you can get more there.

1 comment:

Kathy B! said...

I would've wrapped myself around a tree -- either driving or skiing. Glad to hear that you and Dave are not cut from the same cloth as me :)