I was getting sentimental on New Years Eve this year – thinking back to NYEs of past, way back, 20 years ago, and I realized that I couldn’t remember who I was with or what I did for a few of them and I am someone who has always had a pretty good memory! Specifically, I remember 1997 (Phish at MSG, waiting in line that fall over night in NYC to get tickets as an 18 year old freshman at Cornell) and I remember 1999 (black tie private party at the Rockefeller Center in NYC on Y2K!), but I can’t remember 1998. Just think, kids today will not have this luxury – everything is documented here, on the internet! But anyway, because my brain is starting to selectively remember things, I wanted to look back on 2018 while I still could!
January 2018 – The boys officially started preschool at Roots and Wings, rotating and having an individual day. Our au pair of 2 years, Megan from Australia, had to go back home and we all felt a void immediately. We filled it with dog walks, strider biking, and when it finally snowed, skiing. The boys skied at Heavenly and Sierra with a host of helpers including the Gardners, and Kyle and Jenna. Our friends from Oakland visited and we had fun playing in the snow at Kahle Park and skiing at Sierra. I skinned up to watch the lunar eclipse over Lake Tahoe early one morning and it was an amazing site.
Preschool, here we come!
Feb 2018 – We continued progress toddler skiing with the hockey stick method. We got some snow in Lake Tahoe and had some great powder turns. I went to Revelstoke after 5 years away and got to catch up with some great Canadian friends and ski more powder than my legs could handle. My legs got tired and I missed my kids – they cried every time I video called, so I flew home a day early. I crashed in a hotel with some cool folks from Jackson, including Lynsey Dyer’s cousin AJ. I forgot my keys in Canada and had to use AAA to get a ride to the dealership and get a key made. Looking back, wow it was ridiculous!
Stoked to be in Revelstoke with friends
March 2018 – Returned from Canada to three cuddle machines and a full on Miracle March in Tahoe – lots of great skiing, runs to the valley floor from Heavenly, storm days, great backcountry days – best of the year in Emerald Bay chutes with boot top powder and no other people in site. Superhero birthday party at Kahle Community Center for the now 3 year old triplets went off and was super fun!
When you feel like you found your church.
So much fun at the triplet’s third birthday party!
April 2018 – 2 awesome Alpine Meadows powder days with friends, more toddler skiing, a visit to Oakland to hang with our friends, a visit to St. Louis with family to see my youngest cousin get married, the boys started soccer and it brought back a flood of memories, but they were not quite ready. Lots of work to finish up a fast track project that was on track to be one of the fastest publicly-funded projects ever completed in Tahoe!
Soccer mom so hard!
May 2018: Spring trips to Mammoth to ski with the Mountain Collective followed by some great skiing on Tioga Pass in Unknown Couloir and a steep icy run down “Meghan says it goes” or Chute out with Greg. A great day trip with PK down to Mammoth and another great day trip down by the Saddlebag Lake area that was almost too pretty to make our minds up about what to ski! Then we visited my sister and her family and my mom in Denver and the boys loved it. We had a blast at the zoo, various splash parks, and the children’s museum. After that trip, I came back and met up with friends from Bozeman to ski Shasta the day after my birthday… we climbed and skied the last day of May and it was in a total cloud and we couldn’t see anything, but we summitted anyway!
Greg about to drop into Unknown Couloir off Dana
Sometimes this is the view from 11,000 feet
Sometimes this is the view from 14,000 feet
Boys loving life at the Denver Childrens Museum
June 2018 – got to play tour guide to friends from Bozeman and Jackson in Lake Tahoe and did a lot of biking and boating. Went up to Shasta for round 2 since I hadn’t skied with Will this season and the forecast looked favorable – skied a new line off the Hotlum route. Lots of great waterskiing and beach time with the boys.
Sometimes this is the view from 14,000 ft
Lake time with out of town friends is so fun
July 2018 – kept turns all year going with a trip up Freel Peak to ski a pretty nice patch of snow. Biked around on 4th of July and other busy weekends with the triplets in the chariot. Some great day dates flyfishing and paddleboarding with PK – celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary 1 day late by flyfishing in Markleeville. My best friend Lauren visited and we had too much fun going on hikes, fishing, boating, playing with the boys and seeing Phish in Tahoe. Camped at Silver Lake with some friends and visited the potholes for the first time. The boys got so dirty but it was somehow fun.
Inflatable SUP made trips to Angora Lake super fun!
Happy Beacan at the beach in July
Peaceful times on the river
August 2018 – I was training to ride Rose to Toads and so I was fitting in a few long bike rides a week… but then I broke my thumb on an early morning ride out to Scott’s lake/Dardenelles – just broke the tip off on a rock garden. It’s still healing as of Jan 2019, but not affecting me. So we spent a lot of time at the beach and I kept my turns all year streak going (month 23) at the patch out near Roundtop. The boys used a kids waterski trainer for the first time and Declan and Beacan loved it!. Started construction on the Kahle Basin just 9 months after getting funding.
Future water skiers
September 2018 – was able to waterski again and enjoy locals summer in Lake Tahoe. It was a pretty cold September though and I was working at lot with 2 construction projects going! The boys started preschool 5 mornings a week and every day they were so excited! Our backyard fence was finished and our backyard was transformed into an awesome play area – it changed the whole feel of our house! We took an awesome evening end of September boat ride to Emerald Bay with Kelly and hiked to the tea house with the boys on Fanette Island. And the boys all did awesome on a kids waterski. And we ended the month with a great fall camping trip to the Eastern Sierra with friends – our last trip before getting a truck camper!
Last camping trip in a 4 person tent! Major upgrade coming!
Hotspringing on the eastside!
Local’s summer… finally may be getting this waterskiing thing!
October 2018 – we bought our very own truck camper – a used Lance 865 out of Colorado. The day it showed up, we took it camping in Coloma for a kids camping weekend. I was able to kayak the upper run of the South Fork American and had a great time and then the triplets had a fun time rafting and camping. I knew I had a hernia surgery scheduled for mid-month, so since my thumb was mostly healed, I started biking as much as possible and conditions were great – some fabulous fall rides on the flume, chimney beach, and toads. Surgery was uneventful and I recovered well so we set off on our first long trip of 2018 – 5 days camping on the California Coast! Our first nanny Lina came to visit and we had such a good time that the boys wanted to camp forever! Then we capped off the month with Halloween dressed as dragons and somehow squeezing in month 25 of turns all year on manmade snow on Mt. Rose. Looking back, despite surgery, this was a great month!
Major upgrade! 5 day trip to the coast in a truck camper!
Fun times in the ocean!
November 2018 – I’m a November hater – I just don’t like the darkness… but I need to change my attitude! I was still healing up and there was no sign of snow. With a nice weekend forecasted, we took one more trip in the camper and the boys loved camping again. We had smoke in a lot of California and the Camp Fire was raging as well as others – things seemed bad. But at the end of the month, right on time, the snow came and I had a fabulous powder day skiing at Kirkwood with friends on the final day of November. The boys rekindled their love for skiing and we found out that Cormac had really caught the skiing bug.
November was kind of blah and then the skiing got GOOD!
December 2018 – Was it that deep day at the local backcountry spot or the 16 days that month that Cormac skied? The kid became a skier this month. He went from skiing holding mom’s hands to skiing all by himself of any blue run, even dipping in for some powder turns. Yeah, that is my highlight of the year. Now just hoping that Beacan and Declan find the same passion!
It’s a lot of work to ski with toddlers, but when it works, it works!
The family out skiing at Kirkwood!
I feel like there is something I didn’t do in 2018 and that is travel to a new place so that is a goal for me in 2019. I did have quite a few micro-adventures closer to home though and honestly, that may be the best thing about having kids – that everything becomes new and exciting again. So, I’m looking forward to loading up the family and getting out there with the new truck camper – both near and far. And I’m hoping to connect with many of my friends again – in person, not on social media. I’m also hoping to bring my energy – the energy I get when I’m living my best life – to the world. And I want to write some of this down, so I remember it! Happy new year!
Meghan Kelly Teles! 