Christmas in Hilmar

Another great Christmas come and gone. It seemed to go by especially fast for me since I didn't get home until just 4 days before Christmas. Here's a quick run down of my holiday events. Just before Christmas I went on my annual Costco shopping trip with Anne. I was lucky enough to find something for almost everyone on my list! Then on Christmas Eve we had the Waterson side of the family over including my new cousin-in-law Mark.

On Christmas day we had the usual gang over for our whole wheat waffles breakfast. (Gpa and Gma Waterson and Dan) After church almost the entire Jensen side of the family arrived. (minus Andy and Megan) My mom took Kari on a ride, while Eric tried to tame our wild kitten. After a fabulous dinner (which is a staple at any Jensen get-together) we played "Jensen Jepordy." A competition devised by Kari and Grandma to test our mental capacities and memories of family history and events, with categories such as "Papa-isms" (some of the best sayings from Papa) and "House On the Hill." (the wild events and some little known facts about life and family gatherings in Hidden Valley) It became a ferocious battle of minds once it was announced the winning team would receive first dibs on dessert. My team ended up losing but that was only because we had Jim while the other team was stacked with all three Jensen sisters. ;) I can't wait for the rematch next year! Later that night Alex, Jay and I went out in our field in the rain and mud and played frisbee with some lighted mini frisbees we got for Christmas. Good times...

The Drive

I'm back in California after three long days of mind numbing driving. Its a simple trip from MN to CA. Just take 35 south to Des Moines and then I-80 all the way to Sacramento. But that's part of the reason its such a boring drive!
After saying goodbye to my "Minnesota" family (the Balgaard's) I headed out Sunday morning driving all of the way to North Platte, NE. The next day I finished off Nebraska and flew through Wyoming. The drive became a little challenging when I hit some high-wind areas out in Wyoming. At times the road was hard to see with all of the blowing snow and I really had to hang onto the wheel when the winds broad-sided my car. The high prairie is a beautiful area in winter as you can see from some of the pictures. That night I had dinner in Salt Lake City and decided to push on a couple more hours and make it across the salt flats to Wendover, Nevada, where you can get a room in a casino for $29 a night! ;) I headed out early the next morning. Somewhere out in the middle of the desert there was a little hold up when a truck a couple cars in front of me caught on fire or something. It takes awhile for emergency vehicles to respond when you're in the middle of nowhere. I didn't mind the wait since it was a good opportunity to snap some pictures of the desert sunrise. After that, the last day of my drive just seemed to fly by. I listened to a couple audiobooks and only stopped twice all day. Strangely enough I saw my first non-snow sprinkled terrain upon driving through the Sierra Nevada's. Hilmar was an amazingly warm 62 degrees when I arrived home in the afternoon. Not that I'm complaining but I was kind of getting used to thinking of Christmas's as white...
I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

2,137 Miles to go

Well tomorrow I head out on my drive back to California. Google Maps estimates it to be about 1 day and 11 hours of driving. Luckily I get to spread this out over 3 days. I've never done this trip in the middle of winter so I hope all the passes remain open and that I can get some really good pictures!

Finals week flew by. Yesterday I finished up my customary DVD collection of my projects from this quarter... instead of packing... So I've got to cut this post short and get to work! Stay tuned for pictures from the drive sometime next week!

First Post

Well this is my very first blog post!
I hope to be able to use this blog to keep the fam and friends updated on what I've been doing through small text posts and pictures. I'm not sure how much I will actually be able to post, but we will just have to see how things go.

Just to test this out I've posted a couple pictures Jesse and I took last weekend while crossing semi-frozen Little Long Lake in a canoe. We've been going on quite a few winter adventures lately. Just yesterday in the middle of the night we hiked cross country through the snow (across fields, marshes, and lakes) from my house in St. Boni all the way to his house. Driving the roads between our houses takes about 10 minutes. Our hike took 2 1/2 hours. It was a pretty good adventure!