And Finally Some Snow

The first two weeks of February brought the 2015 World Alpine Ski Championships to Beaver Creek. It's a bit like a mini-Olympics for skiers, and all the big names in skiing are there. We watched the races a bit but ended up reveling in the totally empty mountain and had a great day of skiing. We're lucky in that several of the big name skiers train at Vail and Beaver Creek and it's not uncommon to share a lift or a run with someone such as Mikaela Shiffrin. Here's a view of all the race courses in the background of our very colorful skier.

 For Travis' big birthday he requested a ski trip here in Colorado to a ski area we don't normally go to. We narrowed it down to Crested Butte and Monarch and the timing of when we could go landed us at Monarch. We stayed at a hot springs resort nearby and enjoyed soaking in the warm river and pools after a day of better than expected skiing. We also stumbled onto a monthly art walk in Salida and spent most of a day in and out of galleries chatting with artists. All in all a pretty great long weekend.

We also got a decent sized storm here in Denver. Totals across the city varied widely, we ended up with a little less than 8" all of which landed over the weekend. Weekend snow means great sledding opportunities and when F and Emma discovered that their "secret" sledding hill was full of most of the neighborhood kids they were thrilled for the giant play date. Getting to each other was a bit tricky, Emma's gate was frozen shut (see the purple coated youngster in the background working the gate) and our gate was stuck shut by the weight of the snow on the opening side. The two intrepid pals were getting to each other one way or the other... Luckily Dad stepped in and manhandled our gate open and Emma bravely clambered over her fence (which is a little shorter than ours) and the two met in the middle for a day of snow play.

 Unrelated to snow, FFM presented several weeks worth of research and writing in the annual 2nd grade country night. He picked Ireland (yes, Australia was a close second) and filled an entire book with facts and details about the land of his birth. It was a great night seeing all the different books from all the countries and tasting foods from all over the world. F's other bestie, also named Emma, dressed in her native Ethiopian garb and made a lovely pancake similar to a French crepe.

My True Love Gave to Me

This year for Christmas we were blessed with illness! Travis took enough days off that he could spend the entire winter school break with us and all in all we got ONE day of skiing together as a family.

The first weekend of the break Travis was sick with Norovirus, a killer stomach bug. He kindly passed it on to me and I started to come out of it Christmas Day. Meanwhile Travis caught a sore throat/cold that mostly made him tired. Christmas Day went pretty well, then FFM caught the stomach bug and the remainder of our family guests skedaddled before it could strike. After scouring the Vail Valley for Pedialyte Pops FFM consumed half a box and felt better.

Week 2 we had a couple of days of everyone being mostly healthy and we managed a day out on the hill.  Tuesday of the second week Travis woke up with a sore elbow. He had me take a look at it to see if he'd banged it and bruised it, but what I saw was a giant, puffy, angry red welt. Quick trip to Urgent Care and he was armed with two kinds of antibiotics and pain killers for a staph/strep bacterial infection in his elbow. By the weekend my foot ached from doing an extremely cold NYE night time ski down with FFM, but luckily FFM had ski team on Sunday so he was able to get out on the mountain again.

We all were feeling mostly well on Christmas Day and had a wonderful and leisurly day with family. We must have been good kids this year as our wish lists were well represented and we'll have sugary treats for weeks to come.

Cool Gadget from Library + Snow = Super Fun Sunday

Reading all the posters at the library is tedious, but waiting for FFM one day I noticed that we can now check out various electronics like tablets, e-readers, and video cameras. Most notably, the GoPro camera system. I signed us up on the wait list and a couple of weeks later I had a GoPro waiting for me on the hold shelf.

We were hoping to get out for a ski day with it, but things didn't work out as expected so the boys took it sledding instead. I think they had a good time.

After the test run Travis decided his own GoPro was in order so the following week I figured out which set up would work well and got him early birthday present. He's filmed something pretty much every day since he got it and now we have various time lapse and wide angle movies of all kinds of amazing things such as the walk to the mailbox and the drive to school.