birkie weekend!!

One of our favorite weekends of winter has come and gone...The BIRKIE Weekend! We packed up Friday morning and headed to our usual lodging place, The Heartwood. We were a little nervous since we got quite a bit of snow Thursday night and it was still snowing...but we made it safe and sound.

our lil rockstar!

 Chris came home early around 1 and we left around 3 I think. It takes a while to get on the road as a family of four...the snow didn't affect us at all and we made it in good time with only two potty breaks. My parents were already there so they helped us unload and then we got the spaghetti going and waited for the rest of our crew. We were staying with two other families who also LOVE to ski! They also are families of four so we had a busy weekend with 6 kids...2 5-6 month olds, a 2 year old, a 3 year old and a 4 and 5 year old!

So after our pasta feed we got the kiddoes to bed and us skiers made sure we had everything we needed ready for our big day and off to bed we went...6am was going to come early! Some of the kids...okay all the kids except ours were up "helping" us get ready to ski...and by us I mean, myself, my dad, Sheri and Kari. So that left the dads in charge plus my mom, but she left to pick up my dad mid morning. We made it to the parking lot and on the bus and eventually to the start of the race.

on the bus to the start line!

My dad was doing the full 53k Birkie and us ladies were doing the 24k Korteloppet. I signed up for the full but knew I wouldn't make it so I planned to cutoff at the Korte and I am so happy I did. I think I must have signed up on a very good feeling day of pregnancy, thinking that 5 months would be long enough to train. And it may be for some people, but it took a bit longer for me to recover from  the birth than I was expecting and it sure is hard to figure out how to balance being the mom and wife I want to be and working and working out! We will get there though :) Anyways, my dad has done the full Birkie the last 3 years (I think) and always finished feeling great and saying how fun it was, this time he said it was the hardest thing he had ever done. And he probably skied more before this one than before others, so I definitely made the right choice doing the Korte. It was so fun to be on the trails with all the other skiers and of course the snow covered trees! Here are the Korte finishers:

I was excited to get back to the girls, Chris and the cabin though too. They had a fun morning of eating, sledding, playing and watching a few shows. I went outside with Linnea again and played at the playground and walked around a bit before our evening of homemade mac n cheese, part of Rio and bedtime for the kids and games for the adults!

Rio Movie Night! for about a half hour...everyone was so tired!

We had a great pancake breakfast and then more sledding and packing before heading home.

walking/riding to the sledding hill!

sisters.

all bundled up!

Linnea and her papa.

Mama and her girls!

Once home, we actually went sledding again at the choo choo park since Linnea didn't nap in the car, wasn't gonna nap at home and had some energy to spare from being in the car for 2 hours. Chris and I relaxed with the Oscar's once Linnea was in bed. What a wonderful weekend!!! I am so glad Chris was able to get it off :)

Winter swinging!

first time swinging!

so much fun in the snow!