Skiing the Real Mountains

There is so much to write about our family vacation.

I guess I will start with the drive. We drove from Ohio to Kansas where we had our first stop. It was a 12 hour drive, but we rolled into Wamego in time for a yummy home meal cooked by my amazing aunt, uncle and cousins. After a long day on the road there is nothing like coming "home" to see family and to eat, laugh and chit chat. Unfortunately we only had about 16 hours before we were on the road to Denver to pick up my mother-in-law and father-in-law. It was uneventful and the girls all did a really great job with the drive.

We had plenty of days to relax and other days to play hard. Most days were spent with Chad, O'pa, Madison and me up on the mountain SOMEWHERE. All the while O'ma was down the way in the condo nursing Hannah back to health and taming Lillian's fiery temper. (We later learned that Hannah got severe altitude sickness and was perfectly fine once we were below 5000 feet.)

We made a trip into the canyon and say Gypson where the English family has relatives and they all spent time as kids. We also went further out to Glenwood Springs to see the hot springs and the little town.

As for all of us...

Chad had a PRIVATE tour (that was suppose to be a group, but he was the only one to show up) of the mountain (Beaver Creek) with an instructor and did a double black diamond run and a TON of other runs that were nowhere near my level and a little out of O'pa's range as well. He even skied where they do the World Cup!!!

Madison had two days of ski school from 0900-1500! She loved it so much and would have been there every day if we would have let her. Just as her instructors had told us, she has NO FEAR of SPEED! She loved zooming down the mountain as fast as Daddy could take her, stopping... well we are still working on that one.

I had an hour private lesson with "Bob." He helped me find my "comfortable" zone and encouraged me to do runs I was not too thrilled about. After my lesson I was able to work with Chad and O'pa and learned from them and followed them around the mountain as best I could. By my third day I went to the "tippy top" (aka: summit) and skied a green (BEGINNER!!!) run down to the base. That had to be the hardest, most emotional and AMAZING thing I have done in a long time.

Our nights were filled with family dinners, hot tub soaking, movie watching and talking. One night Chad and I were even able to sneak away for a sleigh ride up the mountain for a fancy dinner in a log cabin WITHOUT the kiddos.

Sadly, the week came to a FAST close and we had the LONG and I mean LONG drive home. We made our pit stop in Kansas for less than 12 hours on the way home and rolled into Ohio very early Sunday morning.

I already miss the snow, the trees, the green and the ability to go clip on some skis and cruise down the mountain.