Over this Christmas break (2021) Evan and I had the chance to go on an exciting, much awaited trip- snowboarding.

I had tried snowboarding once before my freshman year of high school and quickly discovered it was not for the faint of heart! I spent most of that trip either on my face, butt, or back, sometimes simply sighing out of frustration or anger- it’s really, really hard to pick up!

So when we made the decision to try it again instead of skiing, I was just a little bit nervous. I thought it had the potential to turn a fun trip into something VERY un-fun (I’m just a little bit competitive). Evan, on the other hand, was pretty excited to try something new! He has grown up excelling in wakeboarding and lake surfing and thought this would be a simple lateral switch.

While the rest of my family left Saturday night after one of my best friend’s weddings, Evan and I stayed an extra day to attend our second wedding the day after (both weddings pictured below).

Having attended both weddings, we vowed to wake up at 3 am the next day to make the long road trip to New Mexico to reunite with the rest of my family: my mom, dad, brother, uncle, and baby cousin! Somehow, we were successful and woke up to begin the 13 hour drive to our snowboarding paradise.

Finally, we got there!! We spent the first day celebrating family Christmas in the living room so we could rest a little bit from our early morning and had a great time opening all our presents (especially my baby cousin). We went to bed jsut to wake up the next day and SNOWBOARD!!!!

Much to my surprise, the second time around something clicked and I was a natural! It was like all my failures the last go around had taught me how to do it the correct way- because as soon as I stepped on my board I knew it would be a great time. It took Evan the first day to catch on, but by the end of the day he was confident and ready to move up from the bunny slopes ;). We spent a lot of the first day perfecting our moves on the bunny and green slopes, vowing to hit the blues and real powder the next day.

The next day proved to be just as fun as we expected, with us being able to conquer the big, blue, scary slope a couple of times (more than we could have ever thought to ask for). Hanging out on the lifts, meeting new people, and getting a drink from the little bar at the bottom of the mountain were also highlights from this day!

After a completely full day on the slopes, the entire family met up at basically the only restaurant in town, the local brewery. After putting our name on the list, we ordered drinks and went on the heated back patio to wait for our table to be ready. Believe it or not, we actually ended up waiting 3 hours to get seated! Although we were all extremely hungry, we were able to order drinks and even get free drink coupons because they did feel really bad for our wait, so I guess it was okay 😉 While we were waiting, to kill time we took pictures in our family Vineyard Vines t-shirts! Look how cute…..

We chose to wake up the next day and drive to Taos, which was a super cute, quaint town (although a little touristy), and unfortunately I did not take many pictures. We walked around the downtown area and Evan and I found ourselves wandering into many different jewelry and artifact shops (and then walking right back out after reading the price tags) and then enjoying lunch at a local Mexican restaurant after meeting up with the fam! That evening we went bowling and then found a natural hot spring that we finally located after hiking about 30 minutes in the dark looking for it. Other highlights from the trip included Dutch Bros, a warehouse gym in the middle of nowhere (shoutout to marathon training for that one), and a potential mild case of asbestus from the Air BnB– hey, whatever you can get for a last minute booking am I right?

All in all, this was an incredible trip filled with good conversations, fun new challenges, and lots of snuggles in the cold weather to stay warm. Thanks for reading and following along– oh and T-minus 212 days until the Wedding and our trip of a lifetime!

-Alexis Clouser-