Still Dreaming...

When Mrs. Wertheimer moved from Watkins to SWS for Owen's fifth grade year, she brought with her the tradition that the fifth grade class performs Dr. Martin Luther King's, I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Nora's class was originally supposed to do it the first week of February, but the heavens were cruel and the National Park's sound people were adamant that it would have to be postponed due to severe thunderstorms (something about children, microphones, and electricity). And so, after a couple of extra weeks of practice, the class closed out the month of February with Dr. King's words on a clear, brisk day where the only precipitation were some tears from the crowd.

It was totally worth the wait.


(And as a bonus we even caught Owen's performance of President Obama's speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington -- just not the rest of the Stuart-Hobson students...)

Latest family selfie :-)

Snowmass 2020

With another February break on the DCPS calendar this year, we planned our fourth ski trip to Snowmass, getting the Hyatt/Fawcett-Zimmerman/Mettenburg gang from Whistler and Deer Valley back together. This year we had great traveling weather, and we all got into Snowmass without a problem. We rented two condos at Top of the Village (the place I stay in Snowmass when I go there for my summer work trips), which worked out well since Cate didn't join us this year and Megan & Kaden had to leave early so Kaden wouldn't miss too much of his freshman year in high school. Our condo ended up being the hang out room and there were plenty of games keeping us busy -- Spaceteam (a cooperative shouting game) lived up to it's name, and plenty of rounds of 7 Wonders, Coup, and Star Realms kept us up late into the night.



The kids were in lessons the first three days, and we had about 9 inches of fresh powder that fell Sunday and Monday, so the adults had some great skiing together. We eased into the first day with some morning skiing then an amazing lunch at Sam's which had a cubby room for all our ski gear and even gave us slippers to wear instead of our ski boots! Unfortunately, I did have my first nasty fall in years on our last run down Funnel (I lost both ski poles and hurt my shoulder!), but it was nothing that could keep me from skiing the rest of the trip :-)



In lessons, Nora and Gigi got to stay together, and Liam even joined them for a day. Kaden did one day in lessons doing crazy stuff in level 8/9, and Owen spent three days in a team group that made it up to level 8 where he started to do some "easy double blacks" as he liked to put it. Once lessons were done, we had a great family day together with plenty of runs off of Elk Camp. Owen, however, was eager to take Nabeel and me down Cirque Headwall, a double black that Nabeel and I have thought about doing for years but never got up the nerve. With Owen as our guide, we decided it was finally time to try it out. The Headwall itself wasn't too bad at all, but once we got down to the moguls through the trees and boulder fields we saw why it rated a double black!



The Mettenburgs left a day early, but for the rest of us our last day on the slopes turned out to be pretty great. Liam wasn't feeling too well, so he stayed in while the rest of us skied together in the morning. Nabeel went to check on him over lunch and thought about calling it a day, but rushed back when we found out that Longshot would be the noon groom and we quickly revised our afternoon agenda. Longshot requires a big hike up above the top of the Elk Camp lift, so Elaine and Nora decided to go off on their own, while the boys (minus Liam) met up for the hike. We'd skied Longshot twice before. Our inaugural run was pretty great since apparently Michelle Obama was there that week and they groomed it for her. The second time we skied it we found the longest ski run in North America to be a mogully mess. This year it was 5.3 miles of beautiful amazing skiing! After Longshot, we met back up with Elaine and Nora, and raced to the complete opposite side of the mountain because Nora decided she wanted to ski a black diamond, and Nabeel and I decided that that black diamond should be Campground. We made it without a moment to spare (we passed ski patrol while they were carrying an axe to close the run on our way), and managed to be nearly the last ones to ski down the run that day. Nora blew us all away with how well she skied the black. She cruised down making it clear to all of us adults that this whole group of kids will surpass us all in skiing ability sooner than we think!



(click here for all the pictures)