Denver

We flew out to Denver, CO to be with Dan’s side of the family the week after Christmas. We had such a great time there! Rob & Laura had enough space for all of us to stay with them—there were 18 of us total! They had an awesome finished basement too, with two extra bedrooms and a bathroom. I have basement envy now.

The first full day in Denver, we went up to the mountains to go skiing/snowboarding. It was a good effort, but just not our day. Drew had a hard time adjusting to the altitude and when we got to the resort he was too exhausted to even walk from the car to the lodge. :( He wasn’t able to snowboard at all. He ended up staying with Aunt Connie, Uncle Bill and cousin Daniel in the lodge. The rest of us rented equipment and bought half day tickets. We took Ava up on the easiest lift—she loved riding the chairlift, she didn’t love trying to ski back down. It was the longest run of my life! She cried, pouted, whined, etc. It probably reminded Dan a lot of how I acted when he was teaching me how to snowboard. After about thirty minutes of that he just took her skis off and handed them to me, then she stood on his board and they both rode down the rest of the way together. We dropped her off at the lodge too. That left us with enough time to do 3-4 runs on our own. Not our best day on the slopes, but we were just excited to get a couple of runs in.

Daniel, Drew and Ava ready for the snow

Mountain View

Kids enjoying the snow

That night after our family dinner, all the kids were begging to open presents. We agreed to open some that night, and the rest in the morning. The five kids got along so well, it was wonderful to see them playing and having a great time together. They had a lot of fun opening their presents and then much more fun playing with everything together over the next few days.