Skiing Mt. Shasta - Feb 25-26, 2008

In what has become an annual tradition (see 2006 & 2007), Dan and I drove to our Dad's house in Cottonwood (Northern California) to hang out and ski at Mt. Shasta Ski Park. Since his house is just 90 minutes from the slopes, it's the perfect rendezvous point and you can't beat the room rate. Mt. Shasta is a relatively small ski area with 3 lifts, 32 trails and 425 acres of skiable terrain. The best part is that there are no crowds which means there are no lift lines.

On Monday (25th), the three of us hit the slopes at about 9:30am. Over the previous 2 days, Shasta had received 14 inches of snow. Therefore, we had nothing but fresh powder to ski on - nice! It was the best possible ski day you could hope for. We started with a couple of easy runs to warm up, then quickly made our way to steeper terrain. The conditions were very forgiving and we had a blast taking run after run with no lines (our longest lift line was 30 seconds) and very few people on the hill to avoid. After more than 20 runs in over 5 hours, we decided to call it a day and save our legs for the next day.

We got up on Tuesday (26th) and Dad was sore from the day before, so he decided to skip the second day of skiing. Dan and I felt good, so we headed up for another day. The weather had warmed a bit and there was mostly blue sky. Since the weather was so warm (mid 50's), we knew the snow would turn a little slushy as the day wore on, so we hit the slopes running and packed in as many runs as we could in the morning. After our lunch break, we did several more runs before Dan got tired at about 2pm. I wasn't done, however, so Dan went back to the lodge while I skied for another hour. Even though the snow on the runs in direct sunlight was getting slushy, we were still able to find runs with great snow throughout the day.

Overall, it was a fun time hanging out, skiing and playing Guitar Hero ;-) I can't wait until next year.

Here's the tally of the number of runs each of us made:
Dave: 22 Monday + 23 Tuesday = 45 Total
Dan: 21 Monday + 18 Tuesday = 39 Total
Dad: 21 Monday + 0 Tuesday = 21 Total

Weekend Images & Kaitlyn Laughing

Left: Kaitlyn waking up from a good night's sleep. Right: Kaitlyn and daddy at a restaurant where we ate breakfast with a friend.

We've been giving Kaitlyn some juice in a sippy cup to get her used to drinking from something other than a bottle. She knows how to get it to her mouth, but needs a little work on tipping it far enough for the juice to come out.

After playing with her toys on the floor, Kaitlyn needed to take a short snooze.

The video below shows Kaitlyn laughing hard at mommy being silly

Welcome to the new Cutforth Family Blog

You are currently looking at the new Cutforth Family Blog. Essentially, this is the Baby Hooey blog with an expanded scope. Instead of only posting Kaitlyn related events (formerly Baby Hooey), we'll now post items involving us as well (formerly Dave's Hooey). Of course, most of the interesting things we do involve Kaitlyn, so she'll still be the star. If you really only want to see Kaitlyn related info, you can use the "Category" links on the left to filter the posts.

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Also, you should update your RSS feeds. You can use the "Subscribe To" link on the left to easily add it to your favorite RSS reader or manually add it using this URL: http://blog.cutforthfamily.com/rss.xml

The new name and URL also align more tightly with our website: www.cutforthfamily.com. This website has a lot of our history prior to starting the blog, so feel free to explore that as well. Welcome to our family... blog.

Tree Removal

Today, we had a tree removed from our backyard. It was a 20 foot Jacaranda that we planted 4 years ago with the intention of providing shade over the patio. Two years ago, we had a patio cover installed which made the tree expendable. Since Jacarandas can get quite large (see photo), it was going to become more of a nuisanse than a pretty tree. We're sorry to see it go, but it had to be done. Below are the before and after photos.

Kaitlyn's first hockey game - Sharks vs. Blackhawks

Today, we took Kaitlyn to see her first San Jose Sharks hockey game at the HP Pavilion. Joining Shawnna and I were my mom, brother (Dan), nephew (Andrew), sister-in-law (Kelley) and her mom (Sue). Being a huge Sharks fan, I was excited to take her to her first game so she could experience the excitement of hockey firsthand. She'll be seeing a lot of hockey during her life, so we might as well introduce her to the greatest sport on the planet as early as possible.

When we first arrived, Kaitlyn was wide-eyed and tried to take it all in. She had never seen so many people and it was very noisy (we brought ear plugs for her, but after they fell out for the 10th time, we decided it was just a waste and covered her ears with our hands when it got really loud). During the entire first period, she looked around at everything that was going on and really seemed to like watching the giant scoreboard above center ice.

Kaitlyn slept during the first intermission and a little of the second period. When the Sharks scored 5:30 into the second period and the crowd erupted, she buried her head in my chest, but didn't cry - 17,496 screaming fans are a bit much for a 7 month old. The third period featured some eating, playing, smiling and she even did the chomp when the Sharks were on the power play (if you don't know what that means, you really need to attend a Sharks game, but Kaitlyn is demonstrating the chomp in the picture below).

All-in-all, Kaitlyn was very well behaved during the entire game. She sat in my lap most of the time and was entertained by all the craziness happening around her. We didn't even have to leave our seats at all due to a fussing baby. She seemed completely content in that environment - that's my baby :-)

Oh yeah, the game. Well, if you're interested, the Sharks won 3-2 in a shootout. Here's the stats:

Score: W 3-2 shootout
1st Period
Blackhawks - Patrick Sharp (Cam Barker, Martin Havlat)
2nd Period
Sharks - Jonathan Cheechoo(PP) (Joe Thornton, Craig Rivet)
3rd Period
Sharks - Marc-Edouard Vlasic (Joe Thornton, Craig Rivet)
Blackhawks - Duncan Keith (Tuomo Ruutu, James Wisniewski)
Overtime
No Scoring
Shootout
Blackhawks - Patrick Kane
Sharks - Joe Pavelski
Sharks - Jeremy Roenick

Sharks SOG: 40
Blackhawks SOG: 21
Winning Goalie: Evgeni Nabokov
Losing Goalie: Nikolai Khabibulin

Tickets: Section 221 Row 8

7 Months Old and free from the swaddle

Last night, we hit a major milestone in the life of Kaitlyn. OK, it was more of a milestone for mom and dad. We put Kaitlyn to bed for the first time without swaddling her. The swaddle has been a great trick to promote sleeping through the night. It mimics the feeling of being held and contains her arms so she doesn't move them around and wake herself up.

As she's grown, we have had to get bigger and bigger swaddles that fit her. Well, we have been using the biggest one they make and she's starting to get too big for it. We figured it wasn't going to be long before she wouldn't fit in it any longer, so we had to make the move. We were a little scared that taking the swaddle out of the equation would equal sleepless nights for her and us. However, we bit the bullet and just did it.

I'm happy to report that our fears were proven to be unfounded as Kaitlyn was a pro at sleeping without a swaddle last night. She did wake up a few times wanting her pacifier and it took a bit longer for her to go back to sleep after her middle of the night bottle, but all-in-all, it was a success. With her arms free, hopefully she'll learn to find her pacifier in the dark, so we don't have to fetch it for her - baby steps. After waking up from her first un-swaddled night of sleep, I took the following photos and video. She seems happy and well rested.