This Brick House: A Trip to the REAL Snow

One of Ashley's Birthday gifts was a BIG surprise...we took her to the mountains to play in the snow. The night before we left I checked the road conditions only to find that just about every mountain was closed because of rock slides, an over abundance of snow or they were already too crowded. I sat at the computer with a huge knot in my gut trying to figure out how to make this snow day a reality. Finally, I came up with Mt. Baldy and from what I read online it was all clear to drive up and they weren't even requiring chains. I was so happy, I figured we would have the whole mountain to ourselves because who goes to Mt. Baldy?? WRONG!!! Apparently everyone goes to Mt. Baldy when all of the other mountains are closed. We drove all the way out there and right when we started to see evidence that a winter storm had tumbled through the mountain we were stopped by the police and told only people with reservations or residents were allowed up because the mountain was full at 6 am!!! We drove away and I turned around to see my daughter absolutely heartbroken, something I had never seen before. You could tell she was trying with all her might to hold back the tears. Remember that we just drove 90 minutes talking all about how to make snow angels, having snow ball fights and sledding. Jason and I frantically started thinking of other options and making phone calls for ideas. We decided to drive towards Wrightwood to see if we could at least find a pile of snow on the side of the road to appease the princess until another time. We drove, actually, drove is definitely the wrong word, we slowly rolled through a TON of traffic until we finally started to see some snow on the ground. Ashley instantly wanted to get out of the car but of course Jason and I wanted to press on to find the "perfect snow" for our girl. We ended up right outside the parking lot to Mountain High and had a blast playing in knee high powder for hours. We made snow angels, had MANY snow ball fights filled with giggles, we built the cutest little snowman and we rode our sleds down some big hills (while doing this I realized I'm a huge chicken because there were some hills Ashley went down that were too "scary" for me). The three of us ended up having an amazing time playing like little kids. We finally decided to leave and Ashley managed to stay awake for a whole 15 minutes and didn't wake up for nearly 4 hours! It was a great way to end Ashley's Birthday celebration. (Sorry there are so many pictures, I had a hard time picking out of the 247 I took!)