That Old Story

You know the old story don’t you. The one about the cobbler’s son? The story that goes, “Everyone had shoes but the cobbler’s son.” Yeah, that’s pretty much the story of our life when it comes to any sort of trip, special event, or vacation. Kia does a pretty good job or remembering the camera for school functions and sporting events, but there is something about the special trips and events that we can’t get down. Fortunately, Kia is very good about getting professional pictures of the kids throughout the year…printing, framing and displaying is a little tougher…

So, why am I even saying this? We went to Colorado to ski this past weekend. Kia and I have been many times before, but we also took our two girls, Kessa and Sephine, who had never been skiing. I’m not sure why we waited quite so long to make the jump, but we did. Possibly because we didn’t want to take younger kids who couldn’t ski yet. Maybe because we didn’t think our kids would be ready to ski that early. I don’t know, but this was the first time with them. We of course didn’t have any camera to document our trip, but we did have our phones…so nice, but not great.

Let me start by saying we’re quite lucky. The Summit area ski resorts are about 10-11 hours from Louisburg, so we can drive (saving a little $$) and my uncle has this incredible house about 15 minutes from Keystone Resort (saving even more $$). But the drive is a little long, and a little flat, and a little boring.

Here’s a shot of what we saw a lot of –

We did pass a wind farm on the way out and back (between Hays and Salina, KS), but both times was basically in the dark. On the way out, we were in complete darkness, Kia was asleep and the girls were watching a movie (how did parents do long trips without DVD players?). All I could see were literally hundreds of red flashing lights coming from each wind turbine. It was pretty freaky and cool at the same time. I had hoped to time our return so I could see it during the day, but I missed it by about 30 minutes. I should have stopped and gotten some pictures…dang!

So skiing. I do really like to ski. I’m not great, but good enough to do most runs that I want to. The first two days of skiing we but the girls in ski school (we had to force Sephine to do day 2. She said, “I thought this was vacation, but I have to go to school!?”) and Kia and I skied the back of Keystone. I’ve forgotten how hard it is on your body to ski. You don’t use a lot of those muscles on a daily basis. Advil was our friend those couple of days.

Here’s Kia relaxing between runs

The 1st day Kessa wanted to go back up after school, so her and I did a slow trip down the easiest green – SchoolMarm. She did great, but Sephine was too cold and tired to even attempt it. Which led us to believe there was no way on day 2 that she or Kessa would want to go back up. It had been cold, windy, and lots of snow (great for me, but 2 kid beginners?).

Here’s what it looked like that day at the bottom of the backside of Keystone –

But they did. They not only both wanted to go up, but go again, and again (Keystone has night skiing available each weekend). We skied until about 6:30 that night, and had a great time. But the best day wasn’t until the 3rd and final day.

Here are Kessa and Sephine waiting for Kia to go up on day 2…see they’re happy. What is it about kids in stuff that is just a little too big for them, and in a situation that is a little more grown up oriented…in my biased opinion, pretty cute.

So day 3 was the best, because we all skied together and skiing almost anything we wanted to on the front side of the mountain (greens and blues). I can’t say enough of how great ski school was for my kids. I’m almost positive they would never want to go back if I had tried to teach them. We quickly discovered that they most liked going in and out of the trees and trying to make the little jumps coming out of the trees. We also learned that Sephine was going to do whatever it took (mainly going really fast) to stay close to me. Quite a picture to see a 7-year-old flying down the mountain, head down, legs spread to maintain a little control, and hands on her legs hunched over. I just knew she was going to go cartwheeling down the mountain at some point…she never did, but she did have a couple of spectacular crashes.

Also on day 3 we visited the snow castle that Keystone built on top of the front mountain. It was the most awesome snow fort that you always dreamed of making as a kid. It was a kid magnet, you would see kids literally ditch their skis/snowboards all over the place and run to the thing…cool –

Kessa was pretty inspired and drew this on Sephine’s etch a sketch that night.

So, that was pretty much our trip. You may have noticed that I don’t have any images of myself, but I actually do, but I’m going to wait to share that another day – that post is going to be a good one…