Thanksgiving break for me this year was a loaded week. For the first half of the week my goal was to soak in as much as home and family as I could because came Wednesday the Uskoski's swept me away to Bend, Oregon (much to my mother's dismay). We, being Cody's family and their close family friends the Levenon's, stayed in a town called Redmond in a nice little house.
This was to be my first skiing excursion, we meant to go Thursday and Friday but due to lack of snow we ended up just going on Friday. To make up for no skiing Thursday we got tricked into going on a "hike" to a waterfall close by. I put hike in quotations because normally you can drive up to the falls, but because it was icy the road was blocked off so you end up just walking down a slushy/icy/snowy road. The end result was pretty and worth it but we just wanted to play games in the warm indoors and drink cocoa all day. We would've been better sports had we been asked if we wanted to go but we got tricked into going. First it was a mile hike, then 3 1/2 then rumor that it was 5 1/2 .... we're not sure if we walked 7 or 11 miles.
this might've been a frozen pond that I tried to walk on that i might've dunked my foot into
Friday we set off early-ish to go to Mount Bachelor. I'm not going to lie I've had mini panic attacks everytime I thought about skiing for the last couple months. It's not that I didn't think that I could do it, I just have a very worse-case-scenario brain. All in all I had a really good time though. Cody was good and just stuck next to me the whole time and let me go my pace. I crashed a total of 4 times and it wasn't even by accident. I would just get going too fast and not know how to stop and just go down. I have mixed feelings about skiing because on one hand you're surrounded by GORGOUS scenery, the kind you feel blessed to be able to see but somehow gets a little ruined in the panic stricken/tense bodied experience of not wanting to crash as you fly down a hill. Cody and I stuck to the bunny hill for the first part of the day... mostly because my biggest battle in skiing is trying to psyche myself out. Some of those hills look REALLY steep! 
i wanted a picture in front of this sign you can't read it but it says Marshmallow: Easiest Run Down... we found it quite entertainingAfter lunch where I was called a wimp for not going on a run we decided to go on an easy one. So we went on the Marshmallow trail. Yes, I picked it on purpose. I just thought it was hillarious that they would give something such a fluffy baby name, especially when compared to devil's backbone! which was on the other side of the mountain. I feel twice, the last being my most epic which has left me the awesome souvenir of a huge wicked looking bruise on my right knee. It accompanies my skiing stories quite good.
I will definately go skiing again, but I don't think I'll ever get hardcore at it, I think I'll be more of a leisure skiier. After we got back from Bend I tried to spend a lot of times playing games with my family (it's what we taylor's do best!).
Now I'm back at icy/snowy Rexburg with a TON of work to do for the last two and a half weeks of school.
Now.......I just want Christmas.
