Gingerbread Men

Yeah... I baked these. I had my last team meeting at Boeing and decided to go above and beyond the usual snack bringing duty that I bestowed upon myself as a co-team leader.

Feeling festive I bought the gingerbread mix at Trader Joes. I followed the directions for cookies and as I rolled the dough out, I suddenly realized the potential of the thin dough in from of me. Without cookie cutters on hand, I grabbed a knife and started cutting - completely liberated from the conformity of standard cookie cutters I was able to make mix and match gingerbread men.

Pick a hat - top hat, baseball cap, or beanie

Choose arm position - normal relaxed at the sides, one hand up waving to a buddy, or the both hands up fist pump!

I then noticed my ginerbread men we basically shirts and pants with heads, so I decided to add some arms, legs, feet, and hands... making a much more realistic gingerbread man (far left).

I finished it off with the running gingerbread man (upper right corner)

Merry Christmas!

Whistler!

With only two weeks left in my great internship at Boeing, I decided that I had to visit Whistler before I depart the Northwest. We drove up Thursday afternoon, which quickly turned to night as it gets dark around here at 4:30pm. Thus I arrived at Whistler with no idea of the views around me.

We woke up with this view from our hotel room... that's the gondola that takes you up the mountain! I couldn't see much due to the clouds, thus at this point, I felt as though this would be just another mountain with groomed snow. We jumped on the Whistler gondola and headed up.

We then hit a nice warm up run and jumped on another lift, going up even higher. As we climbed the sun started to show through the clouds more and more until we climbed above the clouds! It was breathtaking!

At this point, just look at the pictures, because my description doesn't do the view justice!

It looks like a different planet up here!

I'm on top of the world!!!

We spent most of our day snowboarding literally above the clouds on snow that hadn't been touched by anyone else this season (they just opened the lift that goes to the peak for the first time this season). I had to completely re-learn how to snowboard in all of the thick fluffy powder snow. It was so nice to cruise silently through the soft stuff... and when I fell it was like falling into a soft cold bed.

Then we had to ride all the way down to the valley. We'll just say, it's was a long way with lots of breaks. Here's a view from below the clouds with the sun lighting up Whistler Village below.

Day 2 on the mountain was perfectly clear! Here's the group in front of the Olympic mascot!

The valley on a clear day! Awesome snow, awesome view.
After an awesome weekend, I had the privilege of driving us home on a beautiful afternoon. I now see the sights that I missed on the drive up due to the darkness. We were greeted back into the county with a lovely sight to our right.
Whistler... a really amazing place to ski!