Ski Patrol Candidates

Our latest adventure has been entering a year long training program to serve as Ski Patrol at Chestnut Mountain Resort near Galena, IL located along the Mississippi River. We are pictured below in our patrol candidate vests taking a break from skiing.

We make the 1 1/2 hour drive east to the resort about every other weekend for training classes and ski skills lessons. It will take all of this year and potentially part of next year before we are certified and earn our red parkas. During training, we already get to enjoy a lot of the ski patrol benefits. We don't get a paycheck, but we do get to ski, eat, and stay at the resort for free. Essentially we just have to pay for the gas it takes to get us there....not a bad deal if you like skiing and helping people!

There are 11 candidates in our class this year. Only 2 (including me) are female. Most are skiers. A couple of them snowboard. This is a photo of some of our fellow candidates taking a break from skiing. Jonathan has been having fun with "da boys" as he likes to call them. Above (left to right) Jason, Jonathan (who is borrowing Matt's short ski blades in this photo), Mark (his twin brother Steve is also a candidate), and Jordan. As you can see several of them are quite tall. Some of the older patrolers like to tease Jason, Jonathan, and Jordan about their size. One calls them the "half ton of fun" and another says that it sounds more like we are trying to put together a basketball team with a starting line up of 6' 6", 6' 5", and 6' 6".

You may be able to tell that overall the Chestnut ski patrol has a pretty good sense of humour. All of our class instructors are also patrolers. They keep our classes practical, fun, and light hearted. This is a photo of Kathy (one of our instructors) demonstrating a pressure bandage for a head wound while Jason goofs around for the camera.

Last weekend was all about bandaging wounds and dealing with blood. This is a photo of Jonathan practicing how to take off gloves that are covered in blood (we used ketchup for practice) without contaminating himself.

This is another one of our instructors, Deb, showing us what critical blood loss looks like in the snow with some red cough syrup. We also talked a lot about shock and practiced how to assess injured guests.

This is a picture of the view from the lodge at the top of the hill at Chestnut Mountain Resort. It is looking down on the Mississippi River. You can see this view from all of the ski runs. It is really beautiful. Not a bad way to spend our weekends! You can check out more info at this link: https://www.chestnutmtn.com/

Come and ski with us!

Don't play with hatchets!

Well, I wasn't really playing with the hatchet. I was making kindling for the hot tub fire, about a month ago, on a Saturday night while Jonathan was at work. I was doing really good for about 30 minutes and then something??? distracted me, I got smoke in my eyes, or I was just getting tired. Whatever it was I ended up chopped off part of my left thumb!

As you can see it was a very clean cut. I managed to miss the bone and my nail bed. It is also on the outside edge of my left hand (I'm right handed) so the emergency room doc didn't think surgery was needed....it will mostly just be a cosmetic scar. I did manage to find the missing piece and bring it with me to the emergency room, but it was so small (it didn't seem small at the time) that they didn't think it would survive reattachment.

As you can see, after a month, it has already started to fill in and "plump out." I have been cleaning it daily and putting neosporin on it. So far no signs of infection etc. It is just a very slow process of growing skin and scar tissue. They say most of it will grow back and I might have to trim my thumbnail a little slanted. Thanks for bearing with the photos. A little gruesome I know, but I thought it would be a good idea to document some of the healing and see how it actually turns out. For now Coban (a.k.a. Vet Wrap) bandages are my friend.

Winter Wonderland

Starting December 1st we got our first snow, and it has been a winter wonderland here in Illinois ever since. I forgot how much I enjoyed shoveling the sidewalk. I may feel differently come February....but for now it is still a fun novelty after 6 years of living in warm climates.

This is a random group of students out on the trail. It has been bitterly cold and if it weren't for the snow the students would probably be pretty miserable outside in classes all day. I think the snow ends up being more of a distraction (in a good way) for them then the cold. It also means that we can teach them cross country skiing and snow shoeing as part of their classes. It has been really fun teaching and watching kids try these things for the first time. It reminds me of the first time that I tried them and fell in love with winter sports and playing in the snow.

Backyard Pumpkin Carving Party

It is tradition on Taft Campus for the assistant coordinators to host a pumpkin carving party every year for the instructors. I gladly followed along with the tradition and invited all the staff over for an evening in mid October before Halloween.

Me with Dominica, Claire, and Hannah carving away.

Natalie and Autumn

We collected a bowl of the pumpkin seeds to roast.

Several of the girls brought over their bathing suits to try out the Hillbilly hot tub.

We had mulled apple cider simmering over the fire, hot chocolate, sliced apples and fresh roasted pumpkin seeds....yum!

Natalie actually got her pumpkin to fit on her head!


We had a fun time carving pumpkings and enjoying the new backyard with several of our "neighbors" from campus.

Autumn on Parade 5K

The first weekend in October Oregon, IL has a big festival called Autumn on Parade. It involves lots of arts and crafts, good food, and a big parade. It was lots of small town fun. I decided to run in the 5K on Sunday morning with several of my co-workers at Lorado Taft.

Me, Hannah, Erin, and Natalie after the race, back in the Taft Campus parking lot. They are all new Outdoor Educators at Taft this year. It was fun to run again!

Feathering Our Nest

One of the selling points for me in taking this new job was that we would have a yard and that we were welcome to "do whatever we want." Little did they know that Jonathan and I would take full advantage of that offer and enjoy every minute of it to the fullest. If you haven't heard much from us this fall, now you know why.....we have been working hard inside and out feathering our nest.

Front Yard:

Jonathan cleared a lot of the brush and bushes that had just been "let go" over the past several years. He really wanted to grow grass and have a yard to mow. In order to do that we had to rake everything up and get back to bare ground to plant grass seed. He also did some power washing of the house and front and back stoops. He replaced rotten boards and repainted the stoops along with the bird feeder to match the house. We also had to solve some drainage problems....water ran through 3 areas of the yard during heavy rains and snow melt. I drew on my Agronomy class experience at ISU to tile part of the yard, build a drainage creek bed with a footbridge, and create terraces in the back yard. Here are some pictures of our progress on the front yard:



Side Yard:

How about that green, green grass?!? It really put a smile on our faces to see it come in so well after all our hard work. We cleared and created more yard space in the side yard as well as adding a storage shed to serve as a nice place for Jonathan to build a work bench and shelves to store his tools and work on other projects.



Back Yard:

Believe it or not, we spent most of our time in the back yard working on terracing and several special projects. Jonathan repaired and painted the stoops and built a kayak rack that we staked it into the ground on one of the terrace levels. I dug up two different overgrown brick patio areas, leveled, and layed a new bigger brick patio to create a nice outdoor eating and gathering area around the fire bowl and grill.


Jonathan also planted grass in the backyard. We used big boards to walk on while the grass established its root system. You may be wondering....what is in the box on the upper patio????

Jonathan drove home one day from Blain's Farm and Fleet annoucing that he was going to build a wood burning hot tub. With some internet research he put together a good plan and got to work. You start with a metal stock tank. Build a box around it using 2x4's and T1-11. Line the box and bottom of the tank with pink board for insulation. He used cedar to trim it and tongue and groove to make a cover. We ordered a wood burning hot tub heater from www.cowboyhottubs.com and picked up several feet of stove pipe from Menards. Add water and wood to burn and wah lah......a back yard hot tub that only costs us some time and energy to stoke the fire.

Steam rising from the hot water past the stove pipe.

The heater's fire box. The rest is submerged in water. We've discovered that the fastest way to get the water hot is to start a fire in the fire bowl with big logs and then shovel the hot coals from the fire into the heater adding some small sticks and logs to burn on top.

One website recommended using a canoe paddle to stir the water to help evenly heat the water. It also heats up faster the more we stir it. I used a wood burner to add a fun name on the paddle to double as a sign for the hot tub.

Last night we had the temp up to 105 degrees F. A nice treat on a cold night.

Inside:

We've also been busy inside the house. We have 2 bedrooms and one bath on one side of a duplex on campus. We put up the usual pictures and decorations and worked on several other specials projects as well.

I used the woodburner again to turn this old spare paddle into a welcome sign in the entry way by the front door.

An old white board was used to let people know how to find Emily and Becky (who rotate security duty in the evenings when visitors are staying on campus).

I gave it an upgrade using the woodburner and paint to make a new sign to match the colors of the house.

We put up some IKEA shelves to help us add storage and organization to the kitchen.

Jonathan bought a new TV (a wedding gift to ourselves) and we needed more DVD storage. He found this great corner unit at Bare Wood Furniture. He stained it and added the handles. It works great and gives us 4 drawers full of added DVD storage!

This is our living room.

We have been working to refinish this dining room table and chairs (the table is done, and chairs just need their new seats in this photo). We got the table from Jonathan's old roomate in Florida. He didn't want it any more. It came with 2 chairs (that are now painted blue). I stayed on the lookout for more chairs. I literally picked up two chairs off the side of the road bound for the dump in Florida. They were easy to repair with some clamps and wood glue and are now painted green. While we were in Houston someone put two more chairs out by the dumpster at our apartment; I assume because the seats were covered in pet hair. Those two are now painted red. It was quite a process stripping, sanding, repairing, reapolstering, and repainting, but it was worth it. Eat your heart out Pottery Barn! ;-)

This blog post has been a long process, covering several months worth of work. Thanks for looking at all the pictures and enjoying the fruits of our labor with us through pictures.