Winter Park Colorado!

Over MLK weekend in January, we had the blessing of going out to Winter Park Colorado to visit a long-time friend and colleague of Amy's - Dan.  She used to work for him at the Corporate office for 3 years and they have interacted over the years as Dan comes to Corporate for meetings.  Dan owns a ski home near Winter Park and graciously invited the Zs to come, so we took him up on the offer this year!

We flew out at 8:30P on Thursday night on Frontier - reminder never to do that again!  We didn't get into bed until 1A Denver time which was 3A our time.  And never having flown Frontier, we didn't realize that they don't pay attention to the fact that children need to be put together with parents (you have to pay for seat assignments, so usually we just let the airlines chose our seats, but every other airline has always picked the seats to be together for the kids with at least one parent.....not sure with Frontier).  Anyway, Amy had to finagle a seat change by asking passengers on the plane to at least get Addison to be with her (who would want a 7 year old by themselves for a four hour flight that is late at night?).  Anyway, it all worked out in the end thankfully.

We headed out on Friday morning so that we could ski Friday afternoon and it was great!  Winter Park is a very family friendly mountain (And Amy friendly as she doesn't ski super hard stuff!) and we all enjoyed it very much.  Dan's wife didn't come for a few reasons, including family obligations and feeling a bit under the weather, so he headed out on Saturday leaving us with the keys for the house and directions to "Enjoy!"  We rarely go on vacation just by ourselves, so it was a new experience for us! :)  

Dan is in the black beside Amy - although who can tell with our goggles and neck gators on --- it was COLD!

The whole family skied together a lot, with Amy and Kaleb being most of the time on runs together even if Karis and Zachary veered off to a parallel run for a black diamond - so it was nice to be together the whole time and skiing!

There is a mountain behind our heads that is known for the fact that it looks like a bear dragged its claws down the face, leaving perfect parallel claw marks!

Addison took lessons a few days and she was granted poles officially, and told to start getting experience on black diamond runs and moguls - to which she dove in with gusto!  She is such a go-getter with skiing and was super excited to be following her brothers everywhere!

Other random ski pictures:

Unfortunately, the last run of the last day, Addison fell really hard and sprained her MCL.  Thankfully she is fine now after a few weeks of rest (the no recess though as a bummer for her!).  The last run was called Mary Jane - which was a very fun run, and she had done it every day so it wasn't new or too hard - just a fluke fall.  Karis ended up picking her up and skiing her down until it was a lot flatter before letting her finish up the ski vacation with going the rest of the way down (bless her heart, she pizza-ed the way down going slowly compared to her usual gusto).  We obviously didn't take a picture of her in her distress, but as we all made our way down the hill slowly Amy managed to bite it as well - although nothing hurt - so as it was not a fall with an injury, the male Zs had a great time laughing and taking a picture!

Why isn't the snow softer to fall on? :)

In other January news, we celebrated Mom's birthday by going out to Cheesecake factory, which was delicious of course!

Happy Birthday!

The boys went to play paintball early on (fun, but a little painful at times!)

And Mom and Lyle have been watching the newest Litzenberger, baby G, and Addison has been over the moon excited to be able to hold a baby!

Lastly, we finished the gallery wall in our living room!  We are super excited about it - it is places that we have travelled to (we didn't take these pictures though!).  We love it - and it really finishes the room off nicely!  Now we are off to work on the half bath, guest room, kitchen bar stools, kitchen niches, and foyer!