Februrary

This month has been full of fun adventures. January ended with a short trip to Bath, England. It was an amazing and beautiful city. We took a train from London that took about two hours. The country side was absolutely breath taking. There were tons of hills, beautiful trees, and grass for miles. Once we got there we walked throughout the city enjoying the amazing architecture and art throughout the streets. We started our site seeing with a tour through Bath Abbey. There was this giant stained glass window and tons of interesting inscriptions surrounding the walls. As we were enjoying the church one of the chaplains approached us and began chatting with us about where we were from, what we were doing in England, and a little history about the Abbey. She was very interesting to chat with and when it was time for her to do her hourly pray over the microphone she said a sweet little pray for us and our travels. It was very thoughtful and really made me miss going to church back home.

After the abbey we made our way to the Roman baths. Our tour through the baths took about two hours. It was so interesting to see all the history and interesting way people bathed back in the first century. The day ended with a trip to the fashion museum and dinner in the city. All in all the day was wonderful. It was a place that I never really thought about going but very glad that I did.

The first weekend in Feb. we decided to take a ski trip to Val

d'Isere, France. We were there for 4 days. The scenery was perfect and the snow was unforgettable. It snowed about 18 inches the weekend we were there, which made the snowboarding that much better. The first day up the mountain, James, Brandon and I decided to start mid mountain on a red that ended in a blue. The majority of the way down the three of us were doing pretty well. Brandon was still having a little trouble controlling his speed but seemed to be catching on quickly. Once about 200 yards from the end of the mountain James decided to go off by himself and finish on the red while Brandon and I went down a catwalk expecting to finish on the blue. Once we rounded the corner and the mountain opened up again Brandon started speeding down the last 100 or so yards. I noticed he was going way too fast to I started screaming "slow down!" "slow down!" but it was too late. He was completely out of control and going way too fast. His board caught the ground from the front and he started cartwheeling, feet over head about 4 times. My first thought was to laugh because it looked so funny. It was one of those things you see once and know if you tried it 1000 more times you could never do it the same way again. Once he finally stopped and hit the ground, I knew he was hurt. I raced down as fast as I could and skid up beside him only to find him moaning in pain. It took about 2 minutes for him to finally tell me what was hurting because he was grabbing his shoulder, neck, and knees. My first thought was that he either twisted his knee or broke his leg. Long story short I helped him sled the rest of the way down with his bottom on his board and spent the rest of the trip in the room. I felt really bad but he insisted that I not let this ruin my trip too. I spent the rest of the day boarding and half of the next. The second day we made our way to town center and did a little shopping and enjoyed a very yummy cup of tea and hot chocolate.

Both nights we went into town and either had drinks or went to dinner. The town was so adorable and quant. I couldn't have asked for a better end to a not so great start of our trip.

Once we made it back to Kingston we went to the ER. An exam and two x-rays later we found out that Brandon sprang his right knee and broke his left shoulder. One week later he's still in a bit of pain but he's actually able to walk without a limp and move his arm enough to get his shirt off and on by himself.

The trip was still a lot of fun but next time I think we will get Brandon some lessons before we take him up the mountain.