A little Colorado getaway:)

Sean and I LOVE Colorado!  Love it!  We can not wait to take the kids there to go river rafting, skiing, fishing, and camping.  There is so much to do there!  But we left the kids behind to have a little weekend getaway.  It was for our birthdays!  We are lucky enough to have my parents that are willing to take on a little extra craziness for a few days...thank you!  

Our trip started off in Denver.  We always start off in Denver to acclimate to the higher altitude.  I know most people don't do that, but that is just us.  We had an easy 45 minute flight and a lovely evening shopping, eating, going to a movie, and eating cheesecake at the Cheesecake factory.  Weight loss challenge failure for sure!

The next morning we took off to the mountains.  It was really nice in Denver....

 but as soon as we hit the mountains...we hit this.  Non-stop traffic and white out conditions.

We stopped off in Breckenridge for lunch and a snowmobiling tour.  I was a little nervous to drive, so Sean and I rented a 2-seater--and he drove!  It was nice to take in the scenery!

The highest point of the tour was almost 12,000 feet.  It was pretty windy, snowy, and cold that day....but we were still able to enjoy the view!

After the tour we headed to one of our favorite spots-- the Minturn Inn.  It is a lovely little bed and breakfast right outside of Vail, Colorado.  We stayed there on our honeymoon and have always talked about going back.  I would highly, highly recommend this place if you are in the area without kids.  Our room had a 2-person jacuzzi tub and let's just say it was really nice to take a soak right after the snowmobile tour.

 The next day we headed to Beaver Creek, CO, just a few miles up the road.  Our original plan was to go to Vail, but there was a big US Open Snowboarding tournament.  That would have been fun to see, however we didn't want to fight the extra crowd. 

Sean and I were both a bit nervous about hitting the actually mountain.  We took a few lessons at a local "bluff" in Iowa, but we knew it wasn't the same.  Sean has been fighting issues with his height and can't quiet find boots that fully support the extra inches.  We asked around and were led up to an easy beginner area.  Um.....yes so it was a really tough hill.  I was almost in tears thinking if this is as easy as it gets, we are in trouble.  The first little way down I freaked out right in front of a batch of trees...and fell.  Sean fell as well at some point on this hill.  After skiing downhill for a bit, we finally discovered a really nice trail and stuck with it for the rest of the day.  It took us a good hour to ski this trail and we did it 3 times...boy were we soar afterwards! 

 We still have some things to learn to improve our skiing ability.  Confidence issues.  Equipment issues.  We ended up buying a pair of ski boots for each of us!  So this should help some for next season.  We are hoping to get all of the kids in ski school next year at the local hill and one of these days we can all go skiing as a family!  Can.not.wait!