So many updates...

Our S.F Trip
The bad news is that we had to postpone our planned trip to Vail this year because the friends who were going with us had some things come up and couldn't make the trip anymore. The good news is we spent a week in the bay area recently boarding with said friends in Tahoe instead (tough life, I know :P). We boarded for three days straight at Kirkwood, Heavenly, then Sierra.


We had a fantastic time. The first day at Kirkwood was a little icy, but well-groomed so it was still pretty good. That night it dumped several feet of fresh powder and continued to snow all day. For a beginner like me, it was a bit too much of a good thing as the deep powder along with the snowy conditions made it a little difficult to do any carving. In fact, we ended up hiking a good portion of the day because our friend S's board didn't have enough wax on it and even on a solid downslope she wasn't moving more than a few inches in the slightly wet snow. Between hiking back down to the shop and digging out of huge drifts all day, I got more of a workout getting out of trouble than actually boarding :P

The last day at Sierra though was epic. Just the right amount of powder, sunny conditions, relatively short lines--it was great! And I did improve my carving skills a bit, so all in all we ended the trip on a very high note.

So what do you do after spending three days straight snowboarding? Go rock climbing the next day and then play volleyball two days in a row after that, of course! :) Amazingly, our bodies held out; no injuries, no major pains. We had an absolutely fantastic time on our trip, all due to seeing and spending time with all our friends out there. Special thanks to S, R, and their dog Rocky for hosting us in their lovely home all week. Can't wait to see you all again in July when we're out for the first wedding this season!

Big Weekend Purchase #1
Since we've been back, we've been pretty busy. We've been missing a few big furniture items even after six months of (painful, tedious, boring) shopping, one of which is an entertainment unit for the TV and stereo components. Right now the nice new TV is sitting on our old coffee table and the stereo components on a $10 BB&B nightstand. This weekend though we finally decided on a wall unit that fits all our various technologies and matches the furniture we already have. Phew.... That was pretty painful. It should be here next week. Then we just need to get another chair or two for more seating and the living room will be finis!

Then there's Big Weekend Purchase #2. After even more painful shopping, today we finally got our hands on the car we've been shopping for since November. We ended up with a Certified Used 2005 Audi A4 1.8T Quattro. I kind of still can't believe it. My '98 Civic is going to my sisters so they can finally have a car and I'll be picking this baby up in a week or so. On a side note, Audi has a pretty amazing Certified program compared to the others we looked at: 2 additional years or 50,000 miles on top of the original 4 years/50,000 miles. So my '05 car has slightly more coverage than a brand new '07 would. That's pretty cool.

So now, basically, we have no money left :P Guess we'll be sitting at home enjoying our TV for entertainment for a while!