One of the hardest, yet most amazing things in life is watching your children grow up. After 3 boys, these 2 girls have thrown us for quite a loop. Not only are they the babies, but our sweet girls are racing through all life’s firsts, exciting and devastating at the same time. Our winter trip to Colorado was an eye-opening confirmation that our babies are turning into brave and adventurous big girls.
Two nights at Snow Mountain was not enough to get our mountain fix, so we excitedly moved over to Indian Peaks Lodge to take advantage of their 3 night Snowtacular lodging special. Indian Peaks is the newest and nicest of the three lodges, and we loved the advantages of having a beautiful great room to hang out in, and the fridge and microwave to cook all our grocery store “quick” meals.
We loved taking advantage of the fire and great room for some great game playing.
As luck would have it, our room was just above the amazing Nordic center cross county ski trails. We made sure to use them daily!
The forecast showed our first night there would be the mildest, yet the snow kept falling. We took advantage of tubing and fort building while we could still get outside.
The girls asked to go ice skating for the first time, and we hesitantly gave it a try. They shocked us as they skated circles around me. Laney and Ellie asked to go back daily, and it was a great spot for us since it was blocked from all the blowing snow. Ellie would not come off the ice.
As the weather continued to get worse, we spent lots of time in the KIVA roller skating (the girls surprised us once again with their skills and raced away with their walkie talkies), playing dodgeball, basketball, ping pong, and pool. Ethan raced to finish a book from the SMR library before we had to leave.
All five kids tested their skills on the indoor climbing wall, and even the girls made it to the top of the wall. Unfortunately, they didn’t trust the automatic belay system, and Chuck had to rescue them more than once.
As the snow continued to come down harder, and the weather got colder, we took advantage of a group movie night and the library, full of games and puzzles.
The drifts just kept getting bigger and bigger. We were thankful we did not have to travel off site for anything. The pass had been closed down for a couple of the days.
We took turns having free breakfast, and the girls were free every morning because they were under 6. What a treat! Gavin probably got “the most for his money.”
The morning we left, we woke up to some really frigid temps.
We were just hoping Berthoud Pass would be open, and as luck would have it, it was!
We said our goodbye while driving along Steve and the sled dogs. So long second home!
Laney had a miserable ride down from 9000 feet with her poor ear, but was smiling by the time we got to our favorite Kearney hotel and a Fazoli’s lunch stop.
We knew the boys had already gotten the adventurous streak in their blood like us, but this trip showed us the girls were ready too. We love spending time with all these kiddos and watching them become brave boys and gutsy girls. At the end of it all, we were shocked that roller skating, ice skating, skiing, rock climbing, swimming without floaties all happened for these two in the blink of an eye. It seems like yesterday they were crawling, and now, they’re hanging with the rest of the Hoffpack! Go girls!
