Our Wintry Trip

We just returned from an amazing trip to Colorado. I love observing how different Colorado looks from season to season. We were there last summer and it was so strange to see the exact same trails that we hiked covered in snow or the park the kids played at completely covered by 6 foot snow drifts. The river that the boys practically lived in last summer, building dams and getting soaked from head to toe, was frozen solid and covered in snow. It didn’t even look like a river. I would stand there just staring and trying to picture in my mind’s eye what it looked like just months ago.

The first day we were there, we all took a private snow-boarding lesson. My mom and dad, Ross, Sam, Jude, and I were all first-timers. I was pretty sure I would have a hard time, especially since I’ve been skiing since I was 4 years old. I was mostly concerned about my feet being strapped down on the board. And at first, it was weird. The funniest part was that our instructor gave us about a 10 minute lesson on how to strap one foot down to the board and drag it along while walking on the other foot. He made sure we could do that and then we headed straight to the Super Chair lift. All of a sudden I found myself nervous about getting off this thing when I’ve been getting on and off chairlifts my whole life. But I’d never gotten off one with a snowboard strapped to my feet, or rather my foot. My mom, dad, and Sam went in one chair. And me, Ross, Jude, and our instructor, Brian went on the other. We managed to disembark without too much of an ordeal. He then took us their private slope and we were taught how to get up, stop, and eventually how to get down the mountain. It was so much fun. It didn’t hurt that the weather was fantastic: 45 degrees with the sun shining. It was one of those days on the mountain when you are glad for wearing layers. The experience was one I’ll never forget. We managed to learn how to get down the mountain without falling too much. We learned some half turns and how to stop. We fell a lot and were very sore. It was great.

That's me making my way down the hill.

And my very cool dad.

Gee and Sam

Rock star hubby.

Some cute little snowboarders, indeed.

I didn’t get a chance to snowboard again on the trip. I ended up skiing the rest of the time. One day, I skied with Sam between my legs while holding his backpack which is not an easy thing to do. My mom and Brooke skied with us that day too.

We went ice skating one night and spent all of one morning sledding down a huge hill. It was quite a trek up to the top but completely worth it.

I was so glad to spend time with my sister who flew in from LA. We loved being together for an extended amount of time.

I read and became completely engrossed in the Hunger Games series.
Read it. It's good.

One of the boys' favorite pasttimes was to sit in the hot tub outside whilst eating snow. They are practically little junior members of the Polar Bear Club as they would repeatedly get out, grab a handful of snow to eat, then jump back in.

I must say the weather was just amazing for February. We were so thankful that we picked the week we did to be there. We only had one really cold snowy day, and it was nice. We stayed in most of that day reading and sleeping. Ross let me sleep really late. Then we ventured out to eat lunch at a great pizza place, Eric’s, and then off to the Breckenridge Children’s Museum.

But other than that, most of the time it was really great cold weather, sunny and beautiful. We heard that the week after we left, they had huge snowstorm come through. Glad we missed that.

Finally, there was this one wonderful moment I had one night. We all walked to the skating rink and then realized that Sam had left his socks at home. I walked back alone to get them. It was a crispy, cold night. The moon was almost full and the sky was full of stars. It was so empty on the streets and the only sound was my boots crunching the snow below my feet. I was overcome by the quiet beauty of that night. How everything around me was white and gently reflecting the moonlight. How every tree was outlined against the sky, every star seeming to shine and twinkle just the right amount. How my breath looked in the cold air, and how the mountains were dark and looming against the midnight blue sky. I stood there simply being in the moment, wishing it didn’t have to end, but knowing in the back of my mind that it would at some point. That a car would drive by or a cloud would cover the moon or, as it happened, I would eventually remember I had children waiting for their socks at the ice skating rink. So I eventually moved on, but not before trying to memorize every little piece of my moment of beauty.

The trip was very life-giving and even the car ride wasn’t too awful although we did have a flat tire on the way there and Jude threw up on the way back. Got to have some of that stuff thrown in there I guess.