January 12, 2009

So I'll cross one thing off of my winter break list by mentioning that Jeremy and I went skiing the week before Christmas while Grammie had the boys. It was a *lovely* 5 days sans kids, and the skiing wasn't bad either. We did a day with Sarah and Devon at Breckenridge, another day there by ourselves, and then my first days ever at Beaver Creek and Vail (we upgraded our passes this year to all 5 mountains). The Vail day should have been awesome, as they got 13" of new snow. But it was too much for me. I floundered. I fell. I had a tantrum and sent Jeremy off by himself. I had trouble reading maps and ended up on way too many flat catwalks (which are bad for snowboarders because they don't have poles to push along with). But all in all, a bad day skiing has to be better than a good day at the office, right? And PS - you get no sympathy for complaining, "There's too much snow!"

We took the boys up for the first time this season on Saturday. We spent the first day at Keystone, as we are big procrastonators and missed the Breckenridge ski school cut off date. First, a few things about Keystone - it is mostly on North facing slopes in a canyon and therefore the sun does not hit the mountain until approximately noon. That means it it COLD. We did our normal pre-ski routine at the car and that does not work for kids. By the time we took the bus and walked to ski school, Adam was freezing and hysterical. I took him into the school building to warm up and then all was good.

The boys had a good day, ie we didn't have to pick them up early because they were Sick/Sad. Actually, I think they both had goods days. Alex somehow ended up on the magic carpet for a while (which makes no sense to me) and Adam is somewhat turning and stopping this year.

Jeremy and I were kinda wishing were we back at Breck - convienently pictured behind Jeremy here:



Keystone's really not that bad, there were just a lot of people there and we had to deal with the injustice of lift lines. And also, ski school is 6 hours long, which is too long for me and Jeremy. When we ski, we take a hot chocolate break and a smashed PB&J lunch break and otherwise we go. We don't stop on the runs, we get right back on the lift (hopefully). But I think we will learn to deal. You don't get much sympathy complaining, "I had to ski too long!"

On Sunday, we took the kids over to Breck for an hour or so. I put Jeremy in charge of Adam. There's no magic carpet there (that's not ski school only) so rather than walk Adam up a small hill a hundred times, Jeremy took him up the lift. It took 45 minutes, but Adam got down with only a few small meltdowns. I took Alex down 5 runs, including 3 through the baby half pipe and one through Riparoo's Enchanted Forest, which kills me. I am not good in trees. I think Alex did great, and still do not see why he was on a magic carpet.

Here's Jeremy and Adam on their epic quest:



And Alex:



And today was the exact opposite of skiing. I spent all day really busy and ended up with not much to show for it.

Ariel arrived about 30 minutes late due to a surprised snow storm. It must have started snowing very late in the night and it snowed very hard. Most streets weren't plowed or graveled. I dropped Ariel off at school (10 minutes late) then went to physical therapy. The knee taping wasn't a magical as I hoped but nothing really still hurts except going down stairs so it could be worse. After my appointment I ran on their treadmill for 20 excrutiating minutes and did my strength workout. By the time I left, it was time to pick up Adam. Adam and I went directly the the grocery store, then directly to pick up Ariel. Ariel was wearing her backup clothes, she had an accident while playing outside in her snow pants. We got home and had more lunch, Ariel had some mac & cheese and tomato soup. Then she went down for a nap.

I also did a lot of chores, like laundry. When Ariel walked into my room and saw my stripped bed, she asked, "Dee-Dee, did you pee in your bed?" When I said no, she said, "Oh. Did Adam pee in your bed?" I also got our enchilada chile in the crockpot. It's no more than sauteed onions plus a lot of things in cans, but it was nice to have dinner waiting for us when we got home from Alex's 5:15 swim class.

And PSS - we saw the fox again today, twice. Once in our back yard and once running down a different street in our neighborhood.