A 2nd Honeymoon

Oh. My. Goodness.  We had so much fun.  The title says it all.  It was like a 2nd honeymoon for us.  Just the two of us with only fun and relaxing on the agenda.  The only downer was the fact that we totally missed our three little angels and all of them were somewhat ill while we were gone.  Noisy Man, as stated in the previous SOF was still recovering from an ear infection, but other than that, was the healthiest one.  Miss Firecracker decided to get an ear infection two days after I took her in to check for one and as soon as the Dr.'s office closed (of course!), just after Mommy and Daddy got outside of Denver.  Miss Thumb Sucker came down with a nasty cold, and with a stuffy nose it is, obviously, difficult to suck your thumb.  And for Miss Thumb Sucker, if she can't suck her thumb, she can't sleep.  Then, just in time to trade off to the other grandparents for the remainder of the trip, Miss Firecracker spiked a 103.9* fever.  Thankfully, some tylenol took care of most of it.  It seems all involved grandparents made it through the ordeal and today, all 3 children are fever-free.  Still some faucet-like noses and not-so-nice sounding coughs, but otherwise, all seems well.

Now, onto the trip!

The drive out took about 8 hours and 45 minutes.  That is a long trip.  Especially when daddy has a bit of a

sore throat and thus, doesn't feel like being much of a conversationalist.  Thankfully, I love to read and threw down a couple books on the trip out (I highly recommend "Heaven is for Real" by Todd Burpo - amazing!).  We found our condo and unloaded all of our stuff, then headed off to rent our ski equipment before all the shops closed up.  Fifteen minutes before the Ski Exchange locked its doors we walked through them and hooked up with some skis, boots and poles.  (If you want quick service, walk in just before all of the employees want to go home for the night!)  We were at Hernando's for some amazing pizza 30 minutes later. 

Friday morning we were at it bright and early.  With the early-rising children we are used to, it is hard for us to sleep past 7 am and Colorado, of course, is an hour behind our regular clock, so it was all we could do to sleep in until 6:45 am Colorado time.  We were at the slopes by 7:40 and nothing opened until 8 am, so we roamed around a bit and just figured out where everything was.  It has been over 10 years since I have been to Winter Park and it has changed a lot.

Finally, we were able to get our lift tickets, then went back to the car to get all our gear and get ready to hit the slopes when the lifts opened at 9.   It has been  6 years since either one of us has skied, so we new we needed to start off pretty slow, but we both felt a little ridiculous following all the ski school 5-year-olds up on the lift.  Thankfully, as we waited in line a few more full-grown people (who weren't instructors) started getting on the lift as well.  Mommy has skied quite a bit in the past, since her dad is quite the avid skier.  I probably went at least once a year from 7th grade all through college.  Daddy, on the other hand has only been skiing two times before, and with a 6 year break since the last run, it takes a little bit to get your groove back.  Fortunately, skiing seems to come back pretty quickly and we were on the more grown up slopes pretty quickly.  It was a beautiful day for skiing on Friday as it was snowing pretty steadily all day, so we had awesome fresh, soft powder to glide down on. 

Awesome ride - see the WP slopes behind us

Saturday was another day of skiing.  The weather was a bit different and the slopes were quite crowded, but it was still a great day.  It was very windy up on top of the mountain, and at the bottom it was almost hot in all your ski gear.  We had to wait over 20 minutes to get on one lift, but other than that and maybe 2 other 5 minute waits, things moved pretty quickly.  A few of the runs were pretty crowded, but we just noted which ones to stay clear of.  Amazingly, daddy probably only fell 5 or 6 times the entire weekend, with only 2 of them being complete lose-your-skis-20-feet-up-the-mountain type of wipe outs.  Mommy, however had a pretty graceful weekend and only 'tipped over' once while standing at the bottom of a slope waiting for daddy to make it the rest of the way down.  This was an uber-graceful tip as well since I was basically standing still, just trying to turn around. 

At the top of the continental divide

Both afternoons (since we left the slopes both days around 3 pm) we hit the hot tubs at the rec center of our condo complex and rested our weary muscles, then went out for supper.  Friday we ate at Smokin' Moe's, a fabulous BBQ joint in the middle of Winter Park.  While about 1/2 way through our meal, daddy starts pointing at a woman and her little girl walking through the restaurant saying "isn't that. . . that's. . . " but he couldn't come up with her name.  I couldn't see who it was as the salad bar and a big pole were in my line of vision.  Finally, daddy got through is stunned state and remembered her name.  A fellow MOPS steering team member and her family had just walked into the same restaurant!  Hilarious!  She had been sick at the last meeting so we never discussed the fact that we would be in towns 9 hours away from home just 20 minutes apart.  They were staying in Granby while we were in Winter Park.  Too funny!

Single Track

Sunday was some amazing fun as well.  We went on a snowmobile tour up to the continental divide with some amazing views and later went tubing down a huge hill in Fraser, a town just a couple miles up the road from Winter Park.  Snowmobiling was a ton of fun as long as daddy didn't go too fast for mommy's comfort.  He got to have his 'speed' fix at an open area where mommy got off and daddy got to race around for a while.  Then we did what they called some 'single track' while we headed back to the base.  Single track is a snowmobile track that is only about as wide as the snowmobile itself through some thick wooded areas.  Most of this single track was down steep hills so we had to go pretty slow.  It was pretty cool until we lost the last 2 snowmobiles in our group!  There were 2 snowmobiles who had a small kid riding with them, so they went quite a bit slower than the rest of us.  Well, we came to a fork in the track and an arrow was pointing the opposite way of where we went.  We got to a clearing and waited. . . they didn't come out, so the rest of us had to sit in the clearing for about 20-30 minutes while our guide went back to find them.  Thankfully, all turned out fine and we had a blast.



The huge hill for tubing



Lastly, we went on down the road to Fraser and did some awesome tubing down a huge hill.  It was like being kids again, just free falling down the side of a huge sheet of ice.  It was super windy out and thankfully they had a system that pulled you back up the hill otherwise we would have only slid down it maybe 2 times.  The hike back up would have been killer!  I'd love to attach the video we took of each other going down, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet, so pictures will have to suffice.

So, the fun was done and we started the long trek back home the next morning.  It was so great to walk into our home and get huge hugs from the kids.  Nothing makes you appreciate them more than a little time away together!

Riding back up the hill