Colorado!!

We did it.  We embarked on our first official family of four vacation.  I managed to forget only one thing this time.  But considering that one thing held all the diapers and wipes meant for the plane ride, I suppose it was still a big deal.  Luckily Aaron's sister let us know that we left it in the car and were able to buy some at the airport (of course the tiniest pack of diapers and wipes for $20!!), for which we were very grateful since he indeed pooped on the plane.

Here we all are getting ready for takeoff, Barett so excited for his first flight, I'm sure.  Adelyn had  been looking forward to flying on a plane all week, but when we started the climb she said she didn't like the plane after all because it was too fast.  As we got going a little further she asked if our friends that we were visiting lived in the sky.  Love how their little minds work!!

Aaron had some meetings in Colorado, so since our really good friends moved out there in July, we decided to head out with him and rented a little condo together from some good mountain fun.  Adelyn and their two boys were peas in a pod the whole weekend, swimming at the pool, playing in the snow, giggling in their room at night, getting married to each other, sharing pack of gum after pack of gum, you name it.

One day we took the kids sledding and they had a blast while the parents had a workout pulling them back up the hill each time, which at 9300 ft is no joke!! Um, yeah, I only did it once...thanks Aaron! 

The 9300 feet combined with the dry air also was a serious shock for our noses--I couldn't make it through the night without having to blow it several times and both Adelyn and Aaron had a couple bloddy noses while we were there.  TMI?  If so sorry, just a tip to take some nasal spray if you're planning a trip to the Rockies anytime soon!

It was a small price to pay for those beautiful blue skies you see that we enjoyed EVERY single day we were there.  That is a rareity for we Washingtonians in the winter.  Even the day that it snowed all morning managed to have sunny blue skies by the afternoon.

The next day we headed to one of the main parts of the resort...America's largest Zamboni maintained frozen lake.

We took the kids out ice skating on it, something I would not recommend to any parents of a three year old!  Their five year old son started getting the hang of it with one of these "trainers", but their 3 year old wasn't having any of it and our three year old got pretty tired of falling pretty fast.  Bless her heart, she really did the best she could, but let's be serious, even I fall on ice skates and I'm 31!!

Luckily though, a nice neighborly dad saw our plight and let us use the toboggan they had rented when his daughters tired of it.  That was a much bigger hit...once again having the daddies do all the hard work!

At church we met a guy who makes ice castles, so we stopped to check them out on our way out of town.   

They loved this little sleigh ice scuplture, though couldn't quite figure out how to sit down on it without sliding off after two seconds.

It was a great trip and so fun to just hang out and visit with old friends.  When we got back to Denver we also got to see (and eat at Cafe Rio with!) Aaron's cousin who is married to our friend's brother.  A big thanks to the Ponders and the Crisenberrys for being such great hosts and making us so welcome on our stay.  If only you could have had a little more snow on the slopes it would have been perfect!

The most ironic part about the whole trip was the most snow we saw was when we flew home into a blizzard...13 inches of snow in one day...one of the five snowiest days on record for us!!!  Sadly Aaron still had the camera in Colorado, but here is a lame cell phone shot of our backyard with about 2/3 of the snow that we got.

Who would have thought?