Enough lounging on the couch for me. This week I did some swimming
and rode my bike on the trainer.
I also did some archery and a little hiking by the river.
I also planted some seeds to put in my greenhouse.
Given my recent time in the arcade – my sweatshirt from Uncle Chris has new meaning.
I am also going through a Nordic phase. I love all things viking as you can see from the flag I designed for my ‘throne’.
This week Mom’s friend Brook gave us some venison. Boy oh boy was it good.
Last weekend of skiing at Meissner. There is still a lot of snow in some spots,
but not so much in others:
I had three days off from school this week for conferences, so Papa came for a visit. Can you believe he had never been to the High Desert Museum? He has now. They had a Sasquatch exhibit:
And we went to a Mammal Encounter show to see a porcupine. He is a rodent, which, as we all know, means he has ever-growing teeth.
My wingspan is about the same. I’m still a turkey vulture,
but my crutches get me closer to condor range:
Mom saw the tortoises’ lunch and decided her spirit animal must be the desert tortoise.
We went out to dinner at Jia. I had chicken pho:
Dad had the Saigon bowl:
Mom had the spicy eggplant:
and Papa had the tuna poke bowl:
On Sunday, Dad made us buckwheat galettes with Swiss cheese, prosciutto, and an egg for lunch:
Papa made a loaf of golden flax bread. It was delicious:
Sunday afternoon we visited Peterson Rock Garden:
They have a lot of peacocks:
I brought a camera with me and made everyone pose like they always do to me.
Papa’s stay is coming to an end, so I threw him one of my famous going away parties, complete with a bar:
It was a quiet week. I am saving my energy for Papa.
I did go to the Playful Paws Cat Cafe and pet a lot of cats one day.
I kicked it on the couch.
I also learned how to fly Papa’s drone.
Dad and I even figured out how to take pictures with it…like this one.
I have also been busy building. I built another boat out of popsicle sticks and hot glue. I call it The Sparrow.
The sails go up and down.
And, there is a removable jib
that can also go up and down.
I also built a popsicle stick airplane. I can do anything with a glue gun.
I also made some improvements to my 3-D-printed sailboat:
My leg may be out of commission, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep my upper body in shape:
The days are long when you can’t ski or bike or do much besides sit on the couch. I made some pot holders.
Including one for Coach Elsa. We were Team France…
Jameson and Quinn came over this week. That made for a nice break from The Bigs. Here Jameson and I are having lunch break. It was good to refuel before returning to destroying things in The Bigs’ garden with RC cars.
I also went with The Bigs to Dilly Dally Coffee Shop…
and convinced The Mother that another trip to Humm Kombucha was in order.
I also did a puzzle.
And The Bigs took me to Vector Volcano to play video games.
When we were leaving Vector ,The Bigs noticed there was no line at L&K Barbershop. I was not pleased.
The barber had some fun with my hair at the end…I was definitely not pleased.
They had an Easter wheel at the barbershop. You spun it and got a prize. Do you know what my prize was? A gift certificate for Vector Volcano. Awesome!
Now that it is done, I think the haircut looks pretty good, wouldn’t you agree?
I also made a boat from popsicle sticks, glue, and an old sheet.
The Mother then taught me how to use Fusion 360 and helped me design and 3D print a sailboat hull.
I also did some building building and read at 434 page novel.
AND made The Mother play Monopoly again. When I am all healed up, she is burning this game.
We also dyed Easter eggs this week. Rather than buying dye, we decided to use onion skins. A couple of how-tos on the internet said to use cilantro leaves and strawberry stems to create designs on the eggs.
It worked! Unfortunately the dye made brown eggs, which is kinda funny since we had a fridge full of brown eggs and went out of our way to buy white eggs just to dye them. That’s OK, they do look pretty cool.
I also did a crutch Easter egg hunt.
The Bigs bought me an Easter present before I broke my leg. It requires mobility. They felt a little bad about that and bought me a different gift. Then they said ‘oh heck, give him both’…but only if he solves these related puzzles.
In about one minute, I determined the answers were muscles and tennis and got my Sportcord and tennis racket.
This week they made me eat things I did not like. Did they forget they are supposed to feel bad for me and let me eat my favorites?
Roasted carrots with tahini sauce
and Cambodian omelet (egg, ground pork, and shiitake mushrooms) with radish and cucumber pickles.
The Mother made The World’s Greatest Grilled Cheese in the air fryer too…
And for Easter we made butterflied leg of lamb on the grill with brussels and asparagus.
Much of my week happened here:
Mostly I have been reading and reading and reading, but I have also found time to crush The Mother at Monopoly (and chess),
and to tally the grades on her final exams:
I also check my email every morning if you want to send me one:
I have been getting out of the house more and more now. I enjoyed driving my RC truck and car in the sunshine:
It was nice and warm because spring has sprung:
I joined The Bigs for a work lunch with their colleague, Christophe, at the Victorian Cafe. I had the Victorian Breakfast (Dad’s eggs are better):
I visited the Humm Kombucha tasting room:
And, I was visited by Poppy (a 70 lb Old English Sheepdog). She’s awesome!
I’ve been burning through books at an alarming rate, so I made a trip to the bookstore to restock:
I’ve been developing a bit of a funky aroma, so I removed my bandages for a sponge bath. My incisions:
Our St. Patrick’s Day got a bit screwed up, but The Mother made a belated soda bread later in the week:
Here’s a breakfast for you. Soda bread avocado toast with ground lamb, over-easy eggs, berries, and cottage cheese.
Well, it started out like any other week. We had a beautiful bluebird day and my last race. I skied very well and placed 4th overall and then took some runs with Riley.
But, on our last run, I crashed. After a very long time, Ski Patrol came and took me in the sled to Urgent Care. Nobody thought my leg was broken, because I wasn’t crying and carrying on. They did not know I am THE EMMETT and I am that tough. I was more concerned about how Riley was going to get home than I was with my pain.
The folks at Urgent Care determined I needed to go to the ER and I needed to go by ambulance.
When I got to the hospital, the CUT OFF my clothes. At this point, I started to worry about how much this was all going to cost. An ambulance ride, new ski pants, long johns, oh my goodness. The Bigs assured me that is why they go to work, but I was not easily convinced.
I am pretty sure every doctor and nurse in the ER came by to tell me I got 4th place in my race and 5th overall for the season (they did not tell me I had been named the Mayor of Arc City as well, but the MBSEF head coach made sure I knew)! My good buddy Jameson’s dad is an ER doctor and his mom is an anesthesiologist and they made sure everyone knew I was there and to take very good care of me.
I soon had something else to worry about. Surgery.
Here is a before picture of my femur. YIKES.
Here are some after shots. I wanted to pick up some hardware from my last race of the season, though this is not exactly what I had in mind.
I was feeling pretty good after the surgery, but the night was rough.
In the morning, I felt better, but was ravenous.
I quickly mastered moving around on crutches and was able to go home by noon.
Now I’m getting used to my new, temporary reality. The Bigs made me a new dinner table. It’s not great, but it works.
I had a busy week.
On Tuesday it was paintball biathlon. We, luckily, given our winter (another 27 inches of snow this week), had a beautiful day.
While I was shooting targets, The Mother was ‘jogging’ home to make dinner. She seems to stop and take a lot of pictures when she is supposed to be exercising.
On Saturday, Jameson needed a ride to the mountain. It was pretty awesome to have a bud to ride to and from practice with.
I got my award for last week’s race before the start of training. Disappointingly, there were no gift certificates to Mountain Burger handed out with the medals like there were other times. I love Mountain Burger.
I did get a cool pin, though.
Jameson and I are like two peas in a pod. Here we are with our noses buried in books on the ride home.
On Sunday, it was snowing again. We went cross country skiing at Meissner and went to check out the snow dragon.
Here I am enjoying the Meissner dragon 7 years ago.
This week we had Korean Tofu Rice Bowls, made with crispy gochujang tofu, steamed rice, spicy cucumber salad, and kimchi. Topped, of course, with a fried egg.
While I had a sad lunch of ramen noodles at the mountain on Saturday, The Bigs had wraps with brie, spinach, apples, and skirt steak.
This week I had pickled onions The Mother bought at the store. They were OK, definitely not as good as The Nan’s, so I decided to make my own – using my Complete Cookbook for Young Scientists. Red onions go from being deep purple before pickling to bright pink after pickling due to an interaction between a molecule in the onion and the vinegar.
Bachelor got 38 inches of snow in the past 7 days. This is me on Saturday. It was deep.
Here I am with Jameson looking for our line.
We enjoyed the powder in the morning and raced slalom in the afternoon. The Mother was unable to get any good pictures. (Though she did better than the Other Big, who only managed to get a 23-minute video of the inside of his jacket pocket.)
But that doesn’t matter. The only picture that matters is the one of this scoreboard that shows me coming in 6th overall and 4th out of all the boys. Top 5 men get on the ‘podium’, so another goal met.
Because skiing in deep powder from 9 am until 3:30 pm on Saturday didn’t seem like an exhausting enough day for The Mother, I decided on Sunday we would backcountry ski.
It was a gorgeous, cold day.
We did four runs in amazing, deep powder. Everyone, even the much maligned Mother, was all smiles.
I’m now starting to understand why The Bigs love powder days so much.
Nothing special about this dinner…except my amazing sweet-potato-fry log cabin…
It snowed, so I was able to try out my snow plow. It didn’t work great. I’ve made some improvements and there is snow in the forecast for tomorrow morning, so I am anticipating speedy snow removal in the AM.
Monday was President’s Day. There was no school for me, but there was school for The Bigs. So, I went to college and I did The Mother’s work for her – again. I built a photogate for her lab class. It kind of acts like an electronic eye.
We had a bluebird, warm day on Saturday.
While I was training slalom, Mom and Dad met up with some former students and did some laps. I guess not all their students hate them.
On Sunday, my goal was to ski to the summit of Bachelor.
When we got to the Pine Marten Lodge, we saw that the summit route was closed due to an impending storm. So, we skied down and climbed back up to the lodge a second time, for a total of 2,766 vertical feet. We ran into my pediatrician skinning to the lodge at the same time we were. She was more than a little impressed!
Things we ate this week:
Peanut butter ramen, absolutely delicious but a little orange. We put orange bell peppers, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Next time we will use red peppers and maybe add something green!
Sauteed mushrooms, spinach, and walnuts with avocado and soft-boiled eggs on a bed of COTTAGE CHEESE. Weird? Yes. Yummy? YES.
Valentine’s Day is my 1/2 birthday, so we decided to go out and celebrate. We went to Mountain Burger. I definitely ate more than The Mother and I may have eaten more than The Father too. I had a strawberry shake to start.
I ‘built’ my own burger: lamb patty, jack cheese, smoked bacon, pickles, and ketchup. YUM!
The waitress also brought us some chocolate covered strawberries – on the house – probably because I’m so cute. I ate most of them.
Saturday was stormy. There was a lot of skiing without really being able to see.
There was also a lot of powder. I don’t get done with MBSEF until 2:30 and then I always want to do a run with The Bigs, so we all skied from 9 am – 3:00 pm. I went to bed at 8:30 pm. The Mother went at 8:31 pm.
I am skiing great and getting confident. Watch me launch off this jump.
Nailed it.
On Sunday we went backcountry skiing. Due to an amazing traffic jam, we left from the Swampy Sno-Park and headed to Vista Butte (we had planned to park at the Vista Butte Sno-Park, so this change probably added 4 miles to our trip).
I am the Manimal, so this did not bother me at all and I was all smiles and positivity the whole way.
If you look carefully, you can see The Mother trailing behind me in the distance, bet it will be another 8:30 bedtime for her again tonight.
She may be behind, but at her pace, she sees things we miss. Like this poor guy.
We finally all made it to the top of Vista Butte and when the clouds clear there was a Vista!
Ready to attack the hill.
There was about a foot of mash potato like powder. I handled it no problem.
After our ski, we had a picnic in the parking lot. Some of you may remember this picture from a January picnic. The Bigs have fancy Cliq chairs and I am sitting on the ground. Well…
Nan and Pop thought this was not OK. So now I have my own Cliq chair. Much better.
It’s not all skiing all the time…I’ve been doing a lot of shoveling lately – inspiring my latest invention – the scooter snow plow.
