Pagosa Springs, CO: Part 2

On to the skiing portion of our trip!  My Mom and Dad were so gracious to watch our boys for 2 long days while we went up to ski at Wolf Creek.  It was such a nice break and so much fun to get to spend two days without little ones! I love my boys, but a break is well-received in this family :-)

Since I had not been skiing in about 10 years, my sister had not been in 20 years, and Steve had NEVER been, my Dad paid a private instructor to give us all an hour lesson (Thanks Dad!!).  His name was Scott, and he was awesome. He sped us through putting our skis on, making an edge, making a wedge, etc. Steve caught on really quickly, so we were headed up on the ski lift after about 20 minutes. (Scott, our instructor, is on the left and Steve is on the right)

Man, getting off a ski lift is still scary! Especially when you are on the beginner's slope and every other person is falling and you have to avoid running over their sprawled out limbs. My stomach would start to get nervous each time we went up when it was time to lift up the safety bar and get ready to bail off. (I got REALLY nervous when we went up on the big lift and there were 4 people getting off at a time, and I had to worry about not hitting ALL of them!) Once we got up on the hill, we made it down 2 or 3 times and then our hour was up! Steve did great, he never fell, but he was still wedging most of the way down. If you can think back to being a beginning skiier, this is exhausting on your legs! So Scott seemed pretty confident that with another hour of private instruction, he could have Steve parallel skiing. So I left Steve in Scott's capable hands and went up on the big runs with my sister.

So, like I said in my first post, I have never been skiing in the middle of winter. Wow. The temperatures were below zero up on the mountain, AND it was snowing. So this is what we looked like most of the time (My sister was being brave having her face out!)

We had so much fun! When we picked Steve back up an hour later, he was a skiing pro! So if you ever go skiing at Wolf Creek in southern Colorado, hook up with Scott Taylor if you need a lesson.

We had fun skiing with my family, and also my sister-in-law's parents. Tim and Kathy are big time adventurers; they love skiing, sailing, and all kinds of outdoors activities and vacations. Here is Tim skiing backwards while giving Steve some pointers:

Here are Austin and Colton:

Here I am skiing in my purple jacket that Amy B made fun of:


And then....tragedy struck. We had all been having such a good time, enjoying the snow and skiing. Steve and I came down a run and we see a medic up ahead getting ready to put someone on a sled. As we get closer, we realize it is my sister Alicia. Someone fell in front of her and she tried to stop really fast and she blew out her knee. She had to go to the ER in Durango and then had to be in bed the rest of our trip. She just recently had surgery on her knee and had to have an ACL replacement and she had also torn another ligament that I can't remember the initials for right this moment. I can't even begin to tell you where they got the replacement ACL from, but I bet you can guess. She is up and around now in a brace and going to physical therapy several times per week.

So that was our trip! Thanks Mom and Dad, we had a great time and made a lot of fun memories!

I will leave you with our attempts at a family photo. I REALLY wanted a family picture of all of us out in the snow. Well, I had to settle for one on the balcony of our condo, and then there was hardly any room for Heather to take the picture of us so it is really close up. AND we didn't get a single one where all of us were looking at the camera, but it was not for a lack of trying! (I have to give props to Steve because HE is looking at the camera in every picture despite holding a squirming child!)