COLORADO!!!

The girls on the trip...

Jarred and I in front of the pretty Christmas tree.
At the Lodge, these are some of the slopes...you can kind of see the Gemini lift on the right.

View from our Condo, we stayed at Beaver Village.
Christmas tree outside the shopping center we went to.
This is the town of Winterpark, some of it anyway
This is us on the top of the mountain where the restaurant is...

Here are some pictures from our "Spur of the Moment" Colorado Trip we took last week!! The Tappe's called us on Friday the 14th to see if we wanted to go to Winterpark, CO and we were on the road driving on the 19th!!! Crazy!! I LOVE being able to pick up and go at the drop of a hat...I guess that's one reason I don't have kids yet! This was my first trip to Colorado and I had a blast. This was also my first time skiing (unless you want to count skiing when I was 8 in West Virginia, which I'm told is NOTHING like Colorado). Well, if you know me very well you know that I was very timid and scared going up on the mountain. I had no clue how I would do skiing and all I'd heard were horror stories about altitiude sickness, falling, etc. Well, luckily, I didn't have the altitude sickness too bad...I think I had it for a little bit the first morning on the mountain but after I ate lunch I was fine! Let me just take you through my first couple runs down the mountain. Okay, so Jarred, being the wonderful husband he is, was going to stay back w/ me and go slow down the mountain for the first time and just be supportive. We take the easy run and for the most part it went very well. I was feeling really good about myself after that. We decided to do it one more time and then try something a little harder!! The second run went great and of course by that time I'd grown a HUGE head thinking man, what in the world was I worried about. I'm athletic...skiing, no problem!!! HA! Was I wrong???? (Side note: we decided I didn't need ski school, Jarred thought he could just teach me, another side note...he's only been like 3 times before) So he takes me up the mountain a bit further...we get off the ski lift and I'm searching for the Greens...umm...where are the greens honey??? We go left and I look down at what at the time seemed like the biggest drop of my life!!! Straight down too, if I remember correctly!!! Well, Jarred takes off and flys down and gets to the bottom as I'm starting down...at this point, I'm not to happy w/ good ol Jarred!!! I get maybe a fourth of the way down and end up flipping (not on purpose) about half way down. Skis over my head, etc. So now I'm half way down this mountain and I'm upside down and stuck. By the way, it's not easy to just push yourself up on a slant! I know you put your skis sideways on the mountain but it's still hard...plus no ski school, remember??? Well, I finally get up (without Jarred's help b/c he's at the bottom, great right??)!! I'm going again and once again there I go, rolling down the mountain! I've made it to the bottom by now but I'm mentally done and I'm just at the bottom of that drop, not the bottom of the mountain!! I remember falling at least 4 more times down the mountain and on one I heard Jarred say "Good fall honey" at that point I'd had it. I was done falling, all I wanted to do was Get the Heck off that Mountain!!! I can look back now and laugh but at the time I was not a happy camper. We decided to go in and have lunch after that. I needed a break!

That's probably my best story of the trip...the rest went a lot smoother. I didn't fall much after that. I was able to go to the top (where the restaurant is) and ski down multiple times and I thought I did pretty great!! I'm no pro but for not doing the ski school I was pretty proud!! I've never been more sore in my life but it turned out to be worth it!!! I would LOVE to go back someday! Winterpark was beautiful...I don't think I'd ever seen that much snow in my life! OH- you should ask me about Jarred jumping off the ski lift too...that's a good one!! NOT! He did jump off though. I don't have time to write about it now but if you ask me later I'll let you know all about it!! Thanks to everyone who let us borrow all their ski stuff...at least we looked like we've been doing this all our lives!!!