Friday, January 7, 2011

My new favorite sport


Josh and I decided to take advantage of all the snow that we have here in Russia. We normally would grab our skis and take off to the mountains, but if you are a faithful blog reader you would have seen that most of the mountains around us are more of small hills and never prove to be very exciting. So yesterday Josh and I decided that we would try our hat at cross country skiing! So we went out and bought some equipment and scoped out some trails.
I could hardly contain my excitement waiting for the morning to come so we could try our new sport. Josh and I woke up at 3am ready to go, unfortunately we had to wait until 10am until it was light enough to go.




After our long wait the sun finally rose and we headed out! I quickly learned that cross country skiing is nothing like downhill skiing. Only having my toe attached to my ski was a bit weird at first but the best part about cross country skiing is even if you are terrible or a beginner it is still so much fun! Oh, and if I fall flat on my face it doesn’t hurt nearly as much! So I’m not saying the Olympic team will be knocking on my door tomorrow, but I can see us doing this for many years to come!






The next pictures are from the end of our adventure- Josh had been skiing many times before and wanted to show off so he decided to go off the trail into the deep snow. It was all fun and games in the beginning until he realized how deep the snow actually was- These pictures are Josh’s progression to the realization that he is stuck.

Then the conclusion that I knew was inevitable- the only crash of the day- (on a side note he was so stuck that he had to take his skis off to get out) Great ending to our first XC ski day.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Christmas Season

My mom braved the snow and cold this Christmas and made the long trip to Russia to see us. We started her visit with a trip to the Mariinsky theatre first to see the symphony and then on Christmas day we watched the traditional Nutcracker! Two wonderful performances to start our holiday.


We have tons of snow here blanketing the city in beautiful white and setting the background for some photo opts.



Saturday, January 1, 2011

Winter

Winter is here and it is time for falling icicles and slippery streets. Here is a picture of a particularly large one outside of our window.
Our winter began with a trip to Moscow for Thanksgiving weekend-( it had not yet begun to snow in Moscow).

We had a great time and enjoyed seeing the sights but we happily returned home to our beautiful St Petersburg.



But not before we had our fill of Starbucks! Oh how I miss my delicious large, dark, coffee!