Wednesday

kirinqueen and I drove from San Diego to her parents' timeshare at Big Bear Lake, a 6 hour trip which should have taken 2 and a half. The traffic on I-15 was especially bad. We arrived just a few minutes before kirinqueen's parents, checked in, and played some board games with her sister Jennifer before bed.

Thursday

Thursday was quite uneventful.

kirinqueen, her mother, and I went for a scenic drive around the lake.

Since kirinqueen's other sisters weren't going to be there until Friday night, we postponed Thanksgiving dinner until Saturday. Instead we had a wonderful batch of homemade chili for dinner. The rest of our time on Thursday was divided between conversation, reading, and watching entirely too much television.

Friday

Friday was a very lazy, leisurely day. Our time was split between walking, throwing snowballs at each other, snowman construction, the insidious, irresistible Law & Order marathon, eating, drinking, and board games. kirinqueen made her first snowman ever:

After her sisters Laura and Audrey showed up (with Audrey's husband Tom), the women had lots of fun playing board games while Tom, Mark, and I talked politics over beer.

Saturday

After a leisurely morning of snowball fights and snowman construction, kirinqueen, her sister Laura, and I went horseback riding.

It was really really really ridiculously cold out, and I neglected to bring a sweatshirt. Fortunately, one of the workers at the stables loaned me a poofy warm vest thing which kept me warm during the ride. Blackjack, the horse I was riding, didn't find it in himself to throw me off, which was about all I could ask for, given that I'd never ridden a horse before.

We had Thanksgiving dinner immediately upon our return to the timeshare. A large snowstorm was approaching, so we decided to leave after dinner so as to minimize the risk of being stuck on the mountain with kirinqueen's rather small car. But everyone else on the mountain was thinking the same thing, so it took two hours to drive the 20 or so miles to the bottom, and then another two hours to make it from San Bernardino to Fullerton. After grabbing a late supper at Islands, we went to bed.