New Years!

Happy 2009 everyone!

Like I said...I'm behind on this thing, so I'm trying to catch up.

Sean, Pieter, Mom, Dad, Leslie, and I went up to the cabin in Arnold on New Year's Eve day. We had almost made it (we were less than 2 miles away from the cabin), when we faced a hill covered with a sheet of ice in my dad's Camry. Unfortunately for us, the treads on the tires on that car were about worn out, coupled with the fact that neither Leslie nor I had ever driven in snow before, so we didn't make it up the hill. We were stuck, and my mom and dad, who were with the dog in the new CRV (which conveniently has 4-wheel drive and good snow tires) made it up just fine and then looked behind them and saw that we weren't coming anymore. They turned around, and my dad came down to rescue us (sliding down the ice all the way from the top of the hill down to us, which was pretty awesome). We all got out and he got in. He didn't have any control over the car either, but he got it so it was sliding down the hill again instead of being stuck in the middle of it. He also managed to do this really cool 180 so the car was even facing in the right direction! Go Dad! (He takes no credit for the 180. He says it was all the ice, and nothing more. I'll choose to believe that my dad has superpowers. It was THAT good.)

Anyways, we piled into the CRV and made it up to the cabin, where Sean and I started shoveling the driveway, which is REALLY steep. Put it this way - when we're not up there and it has snowed, the neighbor kids use it as a sledding hill because you can get going really fast. Just watch out for the asphalt of the road at the bottom after the roads have been plowed! We had a good 6-8 inches of snow on the ground, and there was a layer of ice underneath all of it, so it took a really long time to get the driveway clear enough for car to make it up (the Camry got to camp out at the bottom of the driveway. No way was it going up at all).

We had dinner, played a game of Risk (Leslie and Pieter cheated, so they destroyed Sean and I), watched Serendipity, and then Pieter ended up coming down with a really nasty 12-hour flu, so he was sick as a dog that night. We brought in the new year by going up on the indoor balcony that overlooks the family room and threw serpentine and mylar confetti stars everywhere. We made such a mess. I even got my New Year's kiss, which was fun. New Year's Day was pretty low-key...Baby New Year came and brough each of us a candy bar. Baby New Year is a Madsen family tradition started by my grandparents because they would shop the after-Christmas sales and then Baby New Year would bring presents for the kids when times were financially rough). Leslie ended up getting the bug that Pieter had, so she was miserable for a while. The day after New Year's, Sean, Pieter, Leslie, and I tried to go sledding up near Bear Valley, but it started snowing and the roads were getting really bad, so we turned around and went back to the cabin. Sean and I went on a walk in the woods behind the cabin and ended up back at the cabin having a mini-snowball fight, taking turns hitting each other and then throwing snowballs at the sliding glass back door of the cabin because my dad was on the other side of it. We found Pieter with a shovel at the front of the cabin, so we started chucking snowballs at him too, which was fun, until we realized that he had a distinct advantage of being able to throw tons of snow at once with his huge shovel. We came inside, soaking wet, but it was so fun. We made it home without incident, and we even got to stop at In-N-Out in Tracy on the way home. I love In-N-Out, and it makes me so sad that there isn't one anywhere near Provo...

I went over to Sean's house after we got back and we worked on cleaning out his room before he leaves. I folded what felt like a never-ending pile of clean laundry for him, and then we went shopping for his Christmas present from me (an electric razor).