Adventures in Triathlon: Winter Break

First, let me start with a correction. Snowboarding 8 out of 10 days is actually not the restful break I envisioned. There's something about snowboarding that is unique unto itself and no matter much in shape I think I am, I still get sore. I think it has something to do with facing sideways, at any rate there were times this week when my hip flexors were so sore that I couldn't march in place (not that I march in place often, but just an example of how little my hip flexors wanted to do anything). And then there was that one day that we got a little bit of new snow and Jeremy and I went out really early and started when the lifts opened. I was jumping the rollers like I had all week, but somehow the newly groomed snow was faster and I was getting way more air than I anticipated. I biffed 2 landings and on the second I tweaked my knee (and later found out that I gave myself whip lash too). This, coming off on our first day seeing ski patrol removing a guy that died crashing into trees (we didn't know he was dead at the time) and thinking of all my racing plans this year led me to tone it down for the rest of the visit.

Anyway - the vacation. We skied (or snowboarded) like crazy. We went almost every day. We went on Christmas, when it there was a -22° wind chill. We went 4 times with the kids. We had some good snow. We had some crappy ice. We went with Pop-Pop, who hasn't skied in 5 years (and is still faster than me) and with Grammie, who went with us last spring break. The boys did great, by the end of the vacation they were right back where they ended last year and are ready to start ski school next week. And here are some skiing pictures:

Almost the whole gang. Missing me (the photographer) and Pop-Pop, who didn't come out that day:

Jeremy and the boys:

Jeremy and me:

My very awesome sister-in-law and brother-in-law bought a time share at the bottom of Peak 7 to get resort day use. Every day we skied with them, we ended it by going to the hot tub. There's a very cool adult only indoor hot tub/steam room/sauna which I did not photograph. When we had the kids, we went to the outdoor hot tub (and I nearly killed my camera, it was not hardy enough to deal with humid sub-zero conditions. There was probably some sort of clause about that.)

Here's Adam in the hot tub:

And it wasn't just a hot tub. There was a heated indoor/outdoor pool, an indoor hot tub, and a heated slide. Well, the slide was heated insomuch that most of the water wasn't frozen. There was a bit of an ice dam at the top, and shoots of icy water spraying face level and then an icy plunge. It was fun to do when the hot tub got too hot.

Adam was all game for the slide but Alex took a lot of coaxing, peer pressure and plain badgering to get to do it. Here's Jeremy finally getting Alex to go:

What the slide looks like from the hot tub when it's not steaming so much. That's one of the kids using crawl stroke to get out of the slide pool:

Devon coming down the slide:

We played games every night, alternating between Mexican Train Dominoes and Sequence. Very serious business indeed:

And I finally got to see the moose that Devon had been seeing all summer. We first saw them coming home from Peak 7 on the side of the road. Apparently moose like to be camouflaged because this is the best picture I got. But I'll take camouflaged over marauding any day. The next day we heard that the came right on the ski slope near where we were skiing (and if you can imagine, that had ski patrol in a tizzy). And the day after that we saw them when we were riding back on the gondola. Moose, they're here, and here to stay:

And of course, there was Christmas. As usually, the boys were spoiled rotten. Here's Adam playing air hockey with Devon while Alex put his new Bionicles together: