BRECKENRIDGE DAY 1 & 2: I...CAN'T....CATCH...MY....BREATH!

Earlier this year, Jennifer Cecil said she wanted to go skiing and asked if I'd plan a trip for all of us. She had to plead and beg but I finally gave in and did (J/K...I love vacations!) So the long awaited (especially by the kids) trip had finally come. We landed in Denver Monday afternoon and made the 2 hour treck to Breckenridge. The house we were staying in was about 15 miles outside of Breckenridge in Alma home of the famous Al-Mart. Okay so it's not famous but it's all they had. There wasn't even a gas station in Alma. We picked the house because it was secluded on 10 acres and we thought the guys would like that since they are really opposed to crowds of people and Breckenridge is a very touristy town. The Irish Rose (our house) had a sledding hill out back (more on that later) and was really perfect for us. We wished it had something bigger than Queen beds but who are we to complain. The negative which I didn't really think about was that the weather got bad a couple of days which made the drive to Breckenridge dangerous. We also had to shovel our car out of the snow which had we been staying at some condos, would have been done for us (I think). The worst part about it was that we had no internet access. We couldn't even get cell service. All 4 adults are IPhone junkies but somehow we survived. We roughed it like the old days-HA! These were some of the views from our house. Disgustingly beautiful!

On Tuesday we didn't race to get up...we are on vacation after all. But by the time we got dressed, which we determined was the hardest part of living up there, made it into Breckenridge, figured out where to park, caught the bus, rented skis, bought our lift tickets and made it up the mountain it was almost 1:00. We were already exhausted and we hadn't even made it down the mountain. Breckenridge is one of the highest spots if not the highest spot in Colorado to ski. This made for headaches and severe shortness of breath. Factor in that some of us were out of shape and you've got exhaustion! This is the only picture I got from the two days of skiing. This was us waiting at the bus stop.

Calli and Colson had been skiing three years ago when Calli was 7 and Colson was 4. We went to Rio Dosa and I got them an hour or two private lesson and they were good to go. They both did great then but I wasn't sure if it would come back to them. Of course it did. They went down without a fall the first trip. Russel had skied before but Jennifer, who will be 40 in 3 weeks, and Carson, who is the same age as Calli, had never been. Since Breckenridge is a much fancier place than Rio Dosa, private lessons at $700 a piece were not an option. They could have done a class for almost $200 but it was all day. We had only planned to ski 2 days so I talked them out of lessons saying that we could teach them.

If I had had any breath left in me, I would have been laughing until I was crying as Carson and Jennifer were both having meltdowns at the very top of the mountain. They had fallen after getting off the lift and were sliding down a small slope and couldn't get back up. Then Colson stopped to help and he fell as he was standing there and he too started sliding. I wasn't much help in pulling them up and they were both having such severe meltdowns that they weren't hearing my instructions on how to get up on their own. Once we got everyone up and rested for a few minutes we started down the mountain. Carson was crying most of the way down and Jennifer just kept saying she couldn't do this. Russel ended up staying with them as Wes and I went with our kids because they were speeding down the mountain. By the time Jennifer and Carson got down the mountain I think they were ready to pack their bags and take the next flight home. Russel and I wouldn't let Carson quit. I knew she would get it.

Colson called the EMT skiers that would rescue people who were hurt and bring them down the mountain "the people with yellow packages". If you were hurt they would put you on a flat board on skis and bundle you up with this yellow tarp looking thing. So Jennifer kept saying that she was going to be coming down the mountain in one of those yellow packages.

It was a fun day but again very exhausting. The sun was out though so it made for a great day of skiing because it wasn't too cold.