Kicking Off 2011...Skiing in Colorado!

Ayden is developing a strong sense of fashion...

We were sad to see the Patriots lose this year, but we knew how to turn our frowns upside down.... We went SKIING!!!

The kids were so excited for every aspect of this adventure. From the plane trip... car rental and then seeing snow for the first time. We have been fielding questions for months on what that white stuff is all about and got a hands on lesson when we landed in Breckenridge, Colorado in a full blown snow storm. It was a white knuckle ride for me going through the pass as it has been a very long time since Chris and I have driven in snow.

There was a lot of speculation as to how everyone was going to like the snow and skiing and we were pleasantly surprised with our predictions. We speculated that Garrett would struggle in the cold. He seems to get blue lips when we are at the beach in the 70's!! He did a lot of talking about the hot chocolate he was going to get at ski school so we assumed he would find every excuse to be sitting by the machine INDOORS. Ayden can be unpredictable. As "girly" as she is, she has a strong athletic side to her and we assumed it could go either way with her in the cold. This made "drop off" even more necessary because what we don't know didn't hurt us... it was nice to have someone else handle her high maintenance ways for a change. We knew Jordan would love skiing but did not anticipate the tears in her eyes when it was time to go home. She took to skiing immediately, but was upset that she did not get the chance to snowboard. It will give her something to look forward to next year.

In the end, Ayden absolutely LOVED the snow. Particularly making snowballs and having snowball fights. When walking through town we would often turn around to wait for her to catch up and find her throwing herself into the snow banks when we grew tired of throwing snowballs at her. We could not get her out of the snow at the end of the day. She enjoyed skiing.... but did not make it out of the ski school. At 4 years old, she enjoyed the "magic carpet" ride up the mountain and liked setting her skies straight and flying down through the obstacles. Garrett was our biggest shocker. He loved the skiing and was actually more coordinated then we thought with the sport. I thought I would die in the middle of the second day when I was going down a slope and looked up on the chairlift at little Garrett's skies on the BIG chairlift!!!!! Ear to ear grin! Jordan, like most sports with her, took to it immediately. She is a natural and it was one of my most amazing mom moments riding up the chairlift with both her and Garrett!

Chris and I had four days of straight skiing..... alone!!!

AWESOME!