Packing for our next hut trip

Jason popped the rest of his birthday balloons to learn that this week we will be going snowshoeing to a hut for two nights and then later downhill skiing at a resort.  We might even go cross country skiing.  He still (hopefully) doesn't know where...!!!

Sunday we'll drive for a while.  Monday we'll snowshoe 6.5 miles in, and stay at a hut.  Let's cross our fingers that Rachel is ok with the backpack for this long, that she stays warm enough, and that we can find our way ok.  6.5 miles is a little longer than our hike to Blue Lakes in Sept (5miles), but we'll be carrying gear and we'll be on snowshoes - not hiking.  It will take hours, and is described by others as a 'slog'. 

We don't expect to see any other people for three days.  Let's then hope that Rachel learns 'no!' and 'hot!' so she doesn't touch the wood stove.  Let's hope we've packed enough food to satisfy these three stomachs (no, not MY three stomachs) that can eat and eat and eat!  Let's hope it's fun and as beautiful as I hope it will be.

we're doing what?!!?

Our living room is full of bags.  We've got a bag for Sunday night/Monday morning.  We've got Rachel's backpack for her to ride in that is also crammed with stuff for me to carry.  Jason will have an 80L (that's big) pack full of food/clothes/sleeping bags with Rachel's travel crib strapped to the outside.  Then we have a bag of clothes for all of us after the hut trip is over.  We also have a box of ski boots/goggles/helmets/gloves.  And we have four pairs of skis, four poles, one chariot, chariot skis, 3 chariot wheels, and a chariot harness to pull Rachel while cross country skiing.  We're hoping that the Saturday postal delivery might bring us the component we need to fit our old ski rack on our new car... if not, it will be an interesting puzzle to fit all this in the car.

Packing for Rachel hasn't seemed too tough, so I'm wondering what I've forgotten.  Perhaps that is because I've done two things to make life easier on us: 1) disposable diapers for 3 days at least and 2) lots of squishable puree-type, store-bought food for Rachel.  The other thing we've done to help packing is buying freeze dried backpacking dinners from the store instead of bringing in real food.

Rachel should be healthy and good to go, since she passed her tests and check up last week.  Despite scaring me this morning with a white poop (momentarily panicked that she had liver disease, but later learned it's probably just because she started drinking cow's milk), she is healthy and happy.  Every day she seems to learn so much right now.  She has learned to take CDs and DVDs out of storage envelopes and see what she can do with them.  So far she's learned that pens fit through the middle of CDs and crayon coloring doesn't do much to the CD surface.  She doesn't seem to be able to learn that people like to sleep in beyond 4am, despite the fact that I now won't nurse her until 5:30am.  What was worse - waking with her at 4am or listening to her cry for 90 min and then waking with her?  hmmmmmmmmmmmmm