skating video

Here is a little video of Dan and the girls skating at Copper Mountain in Colorado last week. We took a ski vacation last week and we brought along my mom to watch the girls for us while we were skiing. We stayed in a cabin in Keystone. We had a lot of fun and a wonderful time skiing, skating, and tubing. Our friends Chris and Marlenes, and their daughter Sophia, also joined us at the cabin for a few days. I've got lots of pictures to post, but it seems like each day that passes without me posting, I'm forgetting more of the fun little details ;)

To give u a recap, we left last Saturday and drove to Denver. We stayed in a hotel there and then took the girls to play at the Denver Children's Museum Sunday morning. We then headed across I-70 to Dillon/Silverthorne where we met up with Chris and Marlenes and bought our groceries for the cabin. We then drove 10 minutes to Keystone, checked into our cabin, and picked up our ski equipment. It was a lovely 2 bedroom cabin with a loft. Fireplace, lots of windows, vaulted ceiling, and beautiful rustic wood decor. I unfortunately didn't take too many pictures, but once my mom sends me hers I might be able to post some from there. Oh, we did have a little episode you might say while we were inspecting the kitchen cabinets and unpacking our groceries.... I found a plastic baggie with marajuana and a glass smoking pipe in it! Yikes! We called the police and they came and took it, then we had to have a teaching lesson with T to show her what it was and explain that if any kids ever show her this stuff and invite her to partake she should say no and leave. Lovely, eh?

Our little W was starting to pick up a cold or allergies or something so these next two nights we got absolutely NO sleep! Not to mention, the first night in the cabin I think I had a bit of altitude sickness and felt nauseous myself so I spent half the night on the bathroom floor preparing to throw up (fortunately I never did). The next day (Monday) I was going skiing no matter what! Fortunately as soon as I got outside in the fresh air I felt better, and then once we got on the mountain I felt fine. We skied at Copper Mtn which is about 20min away. It was snowing and beautiful. Had lots of fun.

Tuesday we skied at Keystone in the morning. Then in the afternoon we gathered up all the kiddos and took everyone sledding on a family hill at Keystone. Sophia especially enjoyed this "more more more". It was fun, but not so fun walking up the hill. They have a groomed sledding hill on the mountain that has an escalator to bring u and your tube back up the mountain (we went on this last time we were here),but since Sophia and Whitney were too small still to go on that one we went to this little family one instead. Still lots of fun though. When we finished , we rode the gondola to the top of the mountain and had lunch ($107!!!!). Not exactly a bargain, but at least we can say we ate at the top of the mountain once . Chalk it up to experience ;) My mom loved being up here and seeing the view. They were also building a kids fort/castle out of snow and ice up here so we played a bit on it. Unfortunately, after the tubing, combined with W's cold, she was tuckered out, so she fell asleep on the bench at the restaurant and missed out on the snow fort. Chris and Marlenes and Sophia headed home after this, so the girls moved back into the second bedroom and we got much better sleep :) we also indulged in some Nyquil for W (ha ha-she REALLY needed it-I wish I had had it the first 2 nights!)

Anyway, Wed, Dan and I went back to Copper to ski and had a great time. Finally went down some black diamond hills (my favorite) and also hit some moguls (Dan's knees hate these). We had a great time. That night Dan and I went to Dillon for dinner at an authentic mexican restaurant where I had really good (although I'm not so sure how authentically mexican it was) Coconut shrimp. Then we went to the outlet mall for just a few minutes to check out the gear at the Columbia store (Marlenes had told us they had some good deals). I got new snow pants for W (only $13!) and a ski jacket for her to grow into, and Dan bought another ski jacket himself. No luck anywhere else and since my hubby was with me he wasn't too interested in traipsing to every store in the area. He did survive the few we went to though so I was proud of him. It was snowing huge fluffy snowflakes at this point so it was really pretty.

Thursday we decided not to go skiing (bummer) and instead took the kids and my mom over to Copper Mtn to go skating. We intended to go skating here at Keystone, but when I called for information on it they informed me that it was closed for the rest of the season, as the zamboni had fallen through the ice! yikes-no skating there anymore. So we went to Copper instead, it was a smaller rink, but most of the time it was just our family on the ice and it was truly lovely. I was so surprised and impressed with our girls. I truly did not think they would be able to skate at all, and after a bit of hand holding, and going at it with a guide thing, they both took off on their own and did a great job! They had a ball and now want to go skating all the time! I believe we have a skating rink in our town so I am going to check it out and see if we can go there sometime soon.

Friday morning we had to check out of the cabin and begin our drive back home. We had originally planned on stopping in the Denver area to do something fun with the kids (Dinasaur Footprints/Buffalo Bill's grave/Butterfly Pavilion), but Whitney was tired, and I was not beginning to feel well either, so we just drove on past and ended up staying the night in Salina KS. Stayed at a really nice hotel and of course the kids swam in the pool again, then headed home the next day. Fortunately, we made it home, because on our drive home, for no reason the instrument panel on the Excursion went dead (no speedometer/tactometer/gas/miles/nothing!) Fortunately we had a GPS that told us our speed and distance so we could sort of judge our gas miles by that. Looking on the internet on Dan's phone he found a chat site that said it was fuse #45. Sure enough, when we pulled that one out, it was blown (all the other ones we had checked b4 were fine). So we replaced it and all seemed well. Till a couple hours later when it happened again. Then another 100 miles later the car suddenly started to lose power (yikes! turn off all the tv's (remember we have 3 going), unplug the GPS, turn off the radio, etc). Pulled into a truck stop and sure enough, when we turned off the motor it didn't turn back on. UGH! Fortunatley, there was a service station right there so we had a guy give us a jump start. It appeared that our alternator was going bad and the drain off all those tv's etc on an old alternator was causing it. We did make it home ok. and once we got home Dan did some more investigating. Turned out there was a wire in the ignition area that was rubbed raw and it appears to have been the cause that kept blowing the fuse. He didn't replace the alternator yet, because after fixing the wire that seems to have fixed the problem. Fun fun fun, at least we made it home all safe and sound :)

So that is the recap of our fun skiing vacation. Yes, I now have a cold, but it was well worth it. :)