New Year's Ski Trip

We'd been tossing around the idea of taking the boys skiing for quite awhile, but as we looked ahead to our calendar for the spring, there were not many options that we could see. We really wanted to avoid Spring Break, due to the crazy crowds. So the Thursday before New Year's we got a wild hair and decided to make use of our upcoming long weekend and head out to Colorado! We left early Saturday morning (yep, two days later!), and stopped in Denver for a late lunch. We had to expose our boys to the legendary Casa Bonita restaurant!We ate some yummy mexican food, watched the cliff divers and other fun shows, then loaded back up for the rest of our trip.

Waaaay back about 17 years ago, I learned to ski at this little mountain called Ski Cooper in Leadville, CO. It's really small and super cheap, but both of those traits suited our little family perfectly. Best of all??? Kids 5 & under ski for FREE! Sign us up!

We booked each of the boys for a 1-hr. private lesson first thing Sunday morning. We had to wait around for awhile because some of the instructors didn't show up to work (possibly due to New Year's Eve the night before??), so the boys were getting a little antsy in all their bulky ski gear with nowhere to go. They sure looked cute, though!

They finally got started and mommy & daddy had exactly one hour to hit the slopes by ourselves. This is Carter with his teacher headed up the bunny slope on the "Magic Carpet" lift.

Asher and his beloved instructor, Bill. Bill must have been pretty great, because every time we saw him (or really, anyone in a red hat) after that lesson, Asher would scream and wave like a crazy kid, "Bill!! Hi, Bill!" Hilarious.

We took a few runs together down the bunny slope after their lessons, and by that time, it was lunch time!

Carter really picked up skiing better than we could have ever hoped for. The whole first day he would just tear straight down the mountain--no turns and no slowing down. He nearly gave us both heart attacks as we thought he was going to plow into someone or something, and we could NOT catch up with the little speed demon. We kept telling him to slow down, but he didn't have time for that. He would always stop at the bottom, though.

Uh oh, daddy down.

Riding the magic carpet.

We bought a harness for Asher so that we wouldn't have to worry about losing him down the mountain...what a Godsend. He loved it too. In fact, he preferred to just buckle his knees and let us carry his entire weight all the way down the mountain chanting, "Me ski all by myself!" Riiiight.

On our second and final day, we took a few more runs on the bunny slope, then decided that Chris and I would each take Carter up the chair lift separately and let him try out his first real "green." The weather was gorgeous--I didn't wear gloves the entire day and we were all shedding layers.

He did so awesome. He really started getting smooth turns down and always stopped when I asked him to (although he much preferred to keep going!).

We had a great time on our little impromptu trip and can't wait to make many more memories on the ski slopes with our family. The boys were bummed to leave, so we're pretty sure they had fun, too!