Spring is HERE!

Its been sooo awesome to have the week off and just hang out with the kids. Our pond is melting, and yesterday, they went tromping around in the snow on the edge, looking at frog eggs, and checking out the Mallard couple that have taken up residence.

Despite the thick blanket of snow that we still have, the trees are budding and the pond plants are growing, we have a willow tree that's already sent up green chutes!

We are firming up our plans for the summer, and they are shaping up well. It looks like this May I'll be able to get in a bunch of back country skiing, first in Telluride with Scotty Kennett, and then I'll travel down to Jackson to visit with my friend Selko and ski in the Teetons.

The kids get out of school in June, and we'll head up to Whitefish to spend a month camping and playing with Mike and his kids on the river and at the skate parks. What does that mean? It means we are open to possibilities.

We've decided that it doesn't have to be normal or usual to be right, so we are just going to roll with it and see what happens.

In July, the kids are going to get to go to our ACES camps here in Aspen, and I'll be training in town, playing with them, and then, take a week and go to Whistler for Big Air camp with Momentum, where I'll write an article on us old folks learning to huck our meat!

In August, its back up to Whitefish with the kids, for two weeks, for more summer river fun, and then I'm off to Chile for steeps camp with my friend Chris. I'll be back before school starts, and then the calm fall season begins here in Aspen.

Kids in school, hiking around locally, writing a lot, hiking to stay fit, book study and MA sessions with my friends who are also training for the team, and lots of family time.

I'm really glad for how things are smoothing out, its amazing to be able to share this world of adventure with my kids, and wonderful to balance it with other kinds of adventures: Bodhi just started his birding list, (he's learned how to use a field guide), Ethan is writing to Dr. Robert Ambrose again, the lead scientist on the Robonaut project for NASA.

We spend about every afternoon tromping around in the creek watching the snowmelt, reading the books that my mom brings home from the library... Ethan's aeronautical skills are improving daily as he practices new and more complicated paper airplanes. Bodhi's written another book, which we are laminating... its amazing what these kids come up with since we don't have a television.

I feel, at the end of the season this year, that my mom and I have come to a strong, supportive understanding of how to balance training and family time, and I'm grateful for our strong relationship and the tribe we've made here in Aspen.

The ducks are landing on the pond, and we are just back from a long two hour walk up the Maroon Creek Road with Weems and the boys, who found a beaver house. The insanity of winter is slowing, the rhythm of spring is beginning, and I feel very grateful.