Saturday, January 22nd

Today we went to Nevado de Toluca with the Michaels, Noelle's family. Nevado de Toluca is a huge, extinct volcano that we can hike inside of. Two large lakes have formed inside of it, and we can see the lava dome. We hiked up the side of the volcano, down into it, across the bottom, up the other side, then all the way back! My dad got to an altitude of 15,300 ft., my mom and I got to 14,800. And at that point we weren't hiking, it was more like hand-over-hand climbing! The best part of climbing the volcano is going down, there are very fun screeing trails! Screeing is like sliding down the side of the volcano on dust and little pieces of rock, it's a lot more fun than it sounds! By the time we got back to the car, everyone was exhausted so we just picked up some McDonald's on the way home.

Breckenridge, CO (Jan. 2nd-Jan. 7th)

We arrived in the late afternoon, so we had to wait until the next day to ski. We woke up and got out there fairly early, we started out easy and slowly worked our way up to harder slopes throughout the week. By the end I was learning to tree and powder ski and had done my first mogul run! And on the last day I even tried a black diamond! It was cool to be able to say that I can do black diamonds (the one I took wasn't even that hard), but I prefer blues. My dad went up to the top of the mountain and did a double black diamond! Nate and Abby were taking all of the jumps they could find, and my mom was flying down the slopes! On the last day Nate was trying to take a jump, but got off balance and ran into a tree. He was okay but a bit shaken up, so he went back to the cabin for a while. It was a fantastic vacation overall!

Denver, CO (Dec. 30th-Jan. 2nd)

We arrived in Denver in the evening, then we had to drive to our friend's house, the Forces. We knew them in Dallas, before we both moved, and it was good to see them again! They live in a house out in the woods, their yard looks like something you'd see on a postcard, with everything covered in a thick layer of snow! While we were there we spent a lot of time playing out in the snow and then coming in to warm up and playing Settlers of Catan almost every night. One day we went out to skate on a frozen lake that was nearby. My mom and I didn't, but everyone else had a lot of fun! Nate had to be convinced that the ice was thick enough to support our weight before he got on. We saw a lot of beautiful ice sculptures nearby, and spent some time shopping as well. We had a lot of fun during our time there!

Tucson, AZ (Dec. 23nd-Dec. 30th)

The first place that we went for our winter vacation was Tucson, AZ. We went there to visit my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. We spent Christmas there with the whole family. My cousin Maddie and I went out hunting for 2 hours with BB guns one day, I killed a rabbit and she got a rabbit and a quail. It was a lot of fun hunting, but actually hitting the animals was a bit sad.

Saturday, December 11th

Today I went to do a service project with a bunch of friends from Capital City, the English-speaking church. We went to DAYA which is a place where homeless teenage girls (ages 13-18) that have babies come to live and are taken careof. Noelle, Miah, Courtney and Abigail were my friends that went. We repainted almost half of the interior of the small building that they lived in, the boys did the other half. My friends and I got REALLY messy in the process! Miah and I got into a mini paint war, first she used my shirt to clean her brush, so I marked her, so she marked me, etc… Then we purposely began to paint ourselves, like Indian war paint! :) We had a lot of fun!