Monday, January 12, 2009

A Christmas to Remember

This was probably one of the best Christmas vacations that I can remember. School got out Dec. 19th finished up another trimester, and two days later Trish and I were on a plane headed for St. Thomas with my Mom, Dad, Christina, Caleb, Audria, David and Daina. What an incredible week! Caleb had some great in depth posts about the trip so I am going to post a link to his blog for those who want to read more. http://calebandaudria.blogspot.com/


We got back the day after Christmas, and after a long day of traveling Trish and I needed some rest. Luckily we had nothing on the calender for the entire week, because Trisha came down with an ear infection, and didn't crawl out of bed for a couple days. After some rest, a round of antibiotics and lots of adjustments she got feeling better. Even though she was feeling better we didn't want to push it to hard so we rented a ton of DVD's from blockbuster and spent two straight days doing nothing but watching movies. It was awesome!

Then we got in the car with three of our good friends and headed North to Colorado to do some skiing. We were headed to Steamboat Springs, ski town USA. Little did we know we were in for an incredible week. After about 14 hours of nothing but Kansas praries we finally hit Colorado and some cold weather. We were in need of a wake up call, unfortunately this wake up call came by a game of Freeze Out. For those unfamiliar with the game, I will explain. When you have really cold weather outside, you roll all the windows down and drive as fast as possible. The first person to give up and roll the window up is the loser. Normally in Texas with 40 degree weather the game last a few minutes, but when you are in Colorado and it is -24 outside you cant take but a few seconds before it is hard to breathe. Somehow nobody wanted to lose so the game last a lot longer than I thought it would. We went for over two minutes, it felt like an eternity. It took me nearly an hour to warm back up again.


At some point during the game I didn't realize that I was sitting on our bread for the week. Luckily I didn't smush it too bad.


We finally got to Steamboat after about 17 hours of driving. Right when we pulled up it started snowing and did not stop but for a few hours the entire week. Trisha and I were really looking forward to doing some skiing because it had been about three years since the last time we got to "shred" (skier talk we picked up from the locals in Colorado) lol...

Two of the people we were with had skied before but one of the girls had never even seen real snow. She grew up in Texas. Luckily Trisha has incredible patience and she spent an entire day helping Belinda learn to ski and before you knew it she was with us skiing down some Blacks!!! Quick learner.

The first two days of skiing were great. Everyone was having a good time and getting some incredible runs in. By the end of the second day everyone was extremely tired from working muscles that we never even knew existed. The group decided that there legs couldn't take another day of skiing so we decided to call it an early night. I had been listening to the snow report and knew it was supposed to dump that night so I was planning on getting up early and catching some runs before we decided to hit the road and head back home. Turns out I would have one of the most amazing days of my life!

It snowed four feet that night. Steamboat declared it powder day, which is when the town decides that this is going to be the best skiing of the season so they shut down the stores and allow the employees to hit the slopes until lunch. I was on the first gondola up to the top of the mountain. I was riding with Ski Patrol, they were heading up to close off half of the mountain because it snowed so much they were worried about avalanches. I had the first tracks down the Two O'clock run which is probably one of the most famous runs at Steamboat. When I stepped off the gondola I immediately sank to my waist in powder. I had the hardest time pushing myself to the edge of the mountain, but when I got there it was one of the most breathtaking experiences I have ever experienced. I leaned back as far as I could to keep my ski tips from diving down and I started to take off. There was no stopping until you got to the bottom of the hill because if you did you would sink and it would be almost impossible to get going again. This was my first time to ski true powder. I had heard my dad talk about the good old days in Montana when blizzards had come through and left amazing powder behind and now I know exactly what he was talking about. You feel like you are floating in the air, you cant even see your legs but you know they are there. Unfortunately I was skiing by myself so I only have pictures of the mountain, but you can still see the beauty.














It was an awesome Christmas break, all we can do is attempt to top it next year!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Isn't God's beauty amazing!? Just think of what Heaven is going to be like! It was great seeing the two of you over Christmas...hopefully, we'll see you again soon!