Colorado

Where to begin?  This was quite the ski trip!  The drive to Colorado to meet Tom's family to ski was so smooth.  We couldn't believe how easy that our travelers had become.  Unfortunately that's where the easy part of this trip ended!  As soon as we arrived at our cabin we saw that we had underestimated the "4 wheel drive recommended" part of the rental agreement.  We did get our vehicles to the cabin once... but after many, many inches of snow over the next few days our wimpy minivans could not handle the grade.  Stressful doesn't describe it.  The rest of the week involved several sets of snow chains, rental vehicles to cart us to & from the road, paying a business owner to store our vans by the highway, & a slippery slide in the brand new van into a BOULDER.  Thankfully the van was towed out unscratched & we managed to get our crew up to the slopes all but the first ski day.  The trip also included lots of cases of altitude sickness, a frantic drive halfway to town in a snow storm with Mae who we thought had a burst appendix (false alarm!), & lots of other drama.  Goodness!  On a good note, the kids loved spending time with their cousins & everyone learned to ski.  We had a wonderful Christmas & beat the blizzard back to Texas on our drive home (although we were pelted by 1 million high speed tumbleweeds in the hurricane force winds!).  Thankfully we got lots of cute pictures despite the crazy!