Brrrrrr! Co co co co cold Colorado!

You paid how much to drag me here?

Snowsuit - $90
Snowboots - $45
New thermal mittens - $25
Flight to Colorado - $550
Rental car - $250
New sled - $15
Tyler's response to his first sledding ride down the hill: "Go home now!" Not exactly priceless. And, of course, my reaction was, "Get your cute little butt back on that sled and we're going down again!" In his defense, there was a lot of fresh powder on the sledding hill and it was all going straight up into the only little 4"X4" space of exposed flesh he had on his entire body (right into the face). John said it was hilarious to see him coming down the mountain trying to block it all out. I guess we should have invested another $10 in a pair of goggles! All was not lost, however. Once we got to the tubling hill and he could sit on my lap and due to my rather heavy backside (or frontside thank you, baby) we would inevitably end up going down backwards which was scary as hell for me but more fun if you didn't want snow flying up in your face. Then, of course, the biggest problem was the fact that we both felt like we were going to have heart attacks walking up the hill!

Can't we just ride it in the lodge?

Our next activity was taking him out on the ice rink in a nice blizzard. Normally I picture keystone ice skating as filled with people all buzzing by happily on the lake. When I looked out towards the middle Christmas tree, I could barely make out the other two figures on the ice as they were bracing themselves against the wind. But, we came to this place to experience winter and goddammit we're going to experience winter! So, into the sled he went. Onto our snowboots went little tread things. Out onto the ice we all trudged. We slung him around for all of 10 minutes before admitting we were soft Californians no longer interested in roughing it and all those movies like "Eight Below" or "Survivorman" that make the snow and the cold look fun and romantic are just a bunch of crap. Back into the lodge we came, defeated by the elements.

Arcade games, now this is more like it!

I think we've gotten the notion that a family snow vacation just isn't for us right now. We honestly felt like the penguins in "Madagascar" who finally arrive in Antarctica and plainly state, "well this sucks!" Perhaps it was because the weather was so drastically cold, snowy and windy. Perhaps we truly are soft, pathetic Californians. Perhaps we should return to the mountains in the summer and try some summer sports when mama isn't pregnant and can't breathe. Perhaps. In the meantime, we were happy to get back to the beach and the 75 degree weather where we could go barefoot and make sledding hills for our "guys" out of the sand!

Best part of sledding? Getting back in the car for a lollipop!