Quick Trip West

We took a relatively spontaneous trip over to Central New York this weekend. My older brother, who lives in Washington State, was on the East Coast for a conference and swung by Syracuse before heading home. We rarely see him so figured it would be a nice opportunity to say hello. His three better quarters weren't with him (his wife and their two cutie pie daughters) but he was plenty entertaining on his own. 

Before we showed up, Jim dug through my parents' 2-3 feet of snow to create some running trails for Merwin in the backyard. The dog loved it! He sort of seems like a little train on the subway tracks.

On Saturday afternoon, we spent our own time out in the snow, traversing some trails at Beaver Lake Nature Center. It was sunny and somehow not bitterly cold so we rented some snowshoes and tromped around the woods. It was my first time on snowshoes and I didn't fall...well, I nearly fell. For some reason, I insisted on holding my leg up for a photo to make it clear I was wearing snowshoes. This was entirely unnecessary (it is easy to see the evidence of snowshoes when they are firmly planted on the ground) and resulted in nearly bringing my bro down with me. Simon captured the incident so my low level of intelligence will be forever documented.