A fun day today, I didn’t have to get up and moving early and had time to write, have some coffee and get out for a stroll with Javi before having some breakfast.
Later we went to a nearby sledding hill, finding the last spot to park that wasn’t in the snow. When we first arrived Javi started whining as Chrissy was parking the car, he was so excited to get out into the snow. As soon as the door opened, he jumped out and ran excitedly in circles, leaping and bounding in the snow. He got the zoomies he was so excited. Theo got out and immediately ran to snowbank, shouted ‘Snow Angel’ and dropped backwards into the snow. Cam worked on his sled. As Chrissy and I changed into our snow boots and added layers of clothing, the boys played enthusiastically in the snow and Javi raced around, more excited than I’ve seen him in a long while. We made our way to the snow hill where there were several families with kids, ranging from babies, looking like starfish in their snowsuits to preteens racing down the hill in tubes wearing short sleeve T-shirts and gloves. It wasn’t too crowded as there was only room for two dozen or so cars to park. A perfect setting as it was off highway 89 so there was no place to park outside of the lot and there was even a bathroom and it was free. Several people had brought camp chairs for the parents to sit in while kids trudged up the hills and raced down on sleds, tubes, saucers, and even an old school toboggan! Hats often flew off heads, especially when kids or adults caught air going over the bumps and ramps on the run. Occasional a wail would come up, usually from a kid who recently arrived and wasn’t used to the cold snow. But mostly there was lots of laughter and excited screams.
One group was busy building barriers for a snowball fight using 5 gallon buckets packed with snow as a larger cold weather version of a sand fort. Very cool!
Javi had a ball racing around. There were several snow people dotted around the landscape – some with complete store-bought outfits other more minimalistic.
We had a fun couple of hours in the snow. Theo took several turns going down the hill on his sled, then turned his attention to building a snowman while Cam hiked almost to the top of the hill and worked on making a fort. He had found some heavy twine at the Airbnb and tied it to the front of the sled so he could easily fill it with snow and haul it to his fort. He came down twice to see what we were doing, sledding quickly down the hill. It started to sprinkle after a while then became more steady as it got closer to noon so we decided to pack up and get some lunch.
We headed to Shasta City and decided the original Black Bear Diner was the best spot, and it was. The warm food was heaven after a couple of hours in the snow. I discovered that this first Black Bear opened the day Emmy was born – 9-22-95. Wow! My kids loved Black Bear when they were little, we may have actually stopped at this one on a trip to Washington one year. I remember how excited they were when one finally opened in Walnut Creek several years later, now there’s about 160 of them.
After a quick stop the grocery store, we headed back to the Airbnb, got the fire going and enjoyed the rainy afternoon. We played Uno and then Clue. After dinner we watched Harry Potter and the Sourcers Stone – well most of it. It’s a long movie and we were tired and warm because of the lovely fire. What a great day.
The Airbnb has an old school dishwasher that needs to be wheeled to the sink and connected to the tap in order to work – we had one like that when we were kids and it got so much use there were tracks on the linoleum. The waterbed I’m sleeping in reminds me of the one mom and dad had when I was growing up. The music is a combination of 70s and early 80s record albums and 90s grunge CDs. We heard the trains several times last night as the tracks are across the street from the Airbnb. There are some great sarcastic books in the bathroom and the owners left us a complementary pre-roll in the drawer of the coffee cart! LOL
