TRAVEL

A Winter Wonderland :: North Lake Tahoe Recap

We’ve been itching to take the girls to the snow for weeks! My sister lives in Portland and has been snowed in for what seems like half the winter. I was sitting over here in Northern California so jealous of all the photos of her snow-covered winter wonderland wishing I could bring my family there to make snow angels and drink hot cocoa with my favorite little sis.

Miraculously, there has been an abundance of snow here in California this winter too, for the first time in a very long time! So my husband and I got to planning and made our way over to North Lake Tahoe for almost an entire week in celebration of his birthday.

We turned the celebration into a much-needed family vacation. Birthdays are the best excuses for vacations! Our friends were so generous to let us use their family cabin in North Lake. (Thank you, Marc and Brie!!) Somewhat spontaneously my sister-in-law and her family were able to come to stay with us for a couple of nights, and coincidently my brother-in-law and his family were already staying 2 miles down the road from us. It ended up being the perfect amount of family time and us time.

It was Kenzie’s first time in the snow, my 20-month-old was hesitant to touch it and didn’t want to walk on it but she loved sledding and eating the fresh powdery fluffy white snow, I’m convinced that was her favorite part. She’s always eating and putting everything in her mouth, so I wasn’t too surprised. 🙂

Piper dove head first into the snow every chance she got. It wouldn’t be long until she was sopping wet from the countless snow angels, summersaults and sliding down and climbing up any slope she could find! She was in heaven… until she was wet. For some reason, this little one can’t stand water on her clothes and she has a meltdown just about every time her clothes have a spot of water on them… something about being a 4-year old I guess.

Pat and I got an entire day to snowboard together thanks to my sister-in-law and cousin-in-law. They were so nice to watch our girls while we took off and boarded the day away at Alpine Meadows Ski Resort. The last time I went snowboarding was when Piper was just 2 years old! Lucky, it’s like riding a bike and you don’t forget how to do it.

The kids had a blast playing in the snow with their 4 cousins.

And bed time couldn’t have gotten much cuter with all the girls at story time.

After the family headed back home, it was just the 4 of us again. We decided to rent a snowboard for Piper at Tahoe Dave’s, we weren’t 100% sure how she’d react to snowboarding if she’d love it or hate it. She’s only 4 after all. It is only $18 a day for a board, bindings, and boots and they were so accommodating and easy to work with so we weren’t too concerned. If she hated snowboarding, it wasn’t a huge expense. Kids 4 and under get free tickets at most of the resorts with the purchase of an adult ticket. The adult tickets, on the other hand, cost an arm and a leg. Anyway, Piper LOVED being pulled around on her snowboard with the Burton Riglet reel and even attempting to go down some tiny hills on her own. She giggled when she fell into the powder and asked to do it again and again and all by herself. It was the cutest thing ever. Anything miniature always gets me but that tiny board, those tiny boots and my cutie all strapped into it in one package tugged at my heartstrings!

Later that afternoon we drove over to another hill and tried some bunny hills… this wasn’t nearly as successful as Piper’s first boarding session. She fell asleep on the way over and was too tired, causing her to be pretty miserable. We tried andthat’ss what matters. We did learn a lesson, don’t go snowboarding with a tired toddler, it just doesn’t work. I want her to enjoy herself. Pat and I snowboard because we love it, and I hope she loves it someday too. Pushing her too hard will result in the opposite, so we didn’t push, just gave her a gentle nudge. She says she wants to do it again when she isn’t tired, so there we go!