Truer words have never been spoken, Mr. Tolkien. I have always thought of adventures as being full of laughter, excitement, smiles, and gallivanting. Sometimes, however, adventures can be full of frayed-nerves, injuries, pain, time-outs, and spankings. The latter, unfortunately, was the last week of my life...
It all started with a family trip to Colorado. And by family, I mean my family minus Paul, since he was traveling for work and couldn't join us for three days. My parents, brother, and sister-in-law were amazing, and helped me keep my children from killing themselves, running away, and/or being kidnapped as we traveled. There are not enough words of gratitude.
Henry was SO SO SO excited to be at the airport. And he is SO SO SO obsessed with "dark blue airplanes." Translation: Southwest planes.
I have no other pictures of us in the airport, going through security, wrestling with luggage. That is unfortunate, as it was impressive. Traveling with two children minus their father is an Olympic sport. No, I'm not even half kidding. I'd like to see Shaun White attempt to shove two strollers through the x-ray machine while holding a 2-year-old by his hoodie (as he chokes), and having an 11-month-old under one arm like a football. Half-pipes are for wimps.
This is the only photo I could swipe on the bus on the way to our rental cars. Notice Henry standing and my father attempting to prevent a face-plant. [Sigh.]
After a serious battle with National car rental [side note: if you have an Executive membership, that means nothing. Well, it means they'll give you a Camry which will not fit all your stuff, even though the person I made the reservation with assured me that my status would get me an SUV that might have 4-wheel drive. Liar.], we made it to our house in Keystone. We had just a little snow. And a few icicles.
I spent the next two days in a CONSTANT battle with Henry. He is such a sweet, good child. Except when he's not. And he was in his not faze. He could sense that Dad wasn't there to help out with discipline, so he pushed every limit and button he could find. He whined, cried, assaulted, fought, and argued about everything for a solid 48 hours. I think the situation was made worse by the fact that we were with my family, which gave him an audience and frustrated the heck out of me. How do you truly convince your siblings who spend limited time with your child that he is not actually Beelzebub when he's acting like it? I think my parents could sense my frayed nerves, so they did offer to watch Henry and allow me to go skiing with Nick and Grace (who recently got engaged!!!) the day Paul was scheduled to arrive. We had a blast!
Henry managed to put on a show for my parents while I was out, and I at least came back to battle refreshed and rejuvenated. When Paul arrived late that night, I was as excited to see him as is humanly possible for an exhausted Mom at 2 a.m. in the midst of REM sleep.
Despite Henry's attitude, my Mom was sweet enough to volunteer to watch Henry so Paul and I could do a little skiing together the next morning. Dad, Paul, and I gladly took off to enjoy the "good skiing weather." Everyone always talks about the fabulousness that is skiing on fresh powder. I've skied on fresh powder before, but nothing like this. The weekend we were there, it snowed between 4' - 6', depending on where you were in Keystone/Breckenridge/Dillon. That's a LOT of snow. And because it continually snowed, I found myself randomly being semi-launched off of mounds of snow, and I'm not a ski jumper. So I found myself skiing a lot slower than normal, mainly due to the snow, the crowds, and the lack of visibility out of my goggles that didn't show shadows and bumps like it would it it had been sunny.
I now blame these conditions on "the incident." I was making my third or fourth run for the day (depending on whether you want to count our initial bunny slope "run" as a run) on Mozart. Note: This run is on the back side of the mountain. When someone says the word Mozart, I typically think of wonderfully pleasant music from the Classical era which was written by an eccentric drunk in a silly wig. I think Amadeus is partly to blame for the image. Why Keystone decided to steal that name and ruin that image for me, I will never know. About halfway down the Mozart, I decided to come to a stop and wait for Dad and Paul to catch up. I was traveling MAYBE 4 mph, put all my weight on my uphill ski to come to a stop, and a huge mound of wonderful marvelous treacherous fresh powder grabbed my left ski and tore my leg in a quite unnatural position. After lots and lots of screaming, Dad and Paul magically appeared and helped me take my skis off. I was able to stand and even attempted to ski completely horizontally to see if my knee could take it. Nope. Not good.
A terribly nice gentleman came down to call for ski patrol. As we waited for help to arrive, Paul managed to drop his helmet which rolled to the bottom of the mountain, which then caused a stranger to lose a ski as she attempted to catch it to help. Great. Just great. This can't get worse, right? HA! Up skis Erica, who needs to load me in a stretcher. Seriously? You want me to lay down in this metal death box where I have zero control of my life and let this 110 pound girl ski me down a mountain? Oh wait. In between skiing me down the mountain, she has to load me on a ski lift to get me over the backside of the mountain to the frontside of the mountain before she skis the long way down. All while I'm confined and at the mercy of other people. You've GOT to be kidding me.
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The next 20 minutes were the most terrifying of my life. I have lived the luge. Only instead of being inside a contained track with some ability to control speed, I was strapped down and traveling in high speeds next to trees. At least I think those green things speeding by at 3,000 mph were trees. I randomly heard Erica yelling. I think she may have been yelling "On your left!" but I would've sworn there were a few times she yelled, "Brace yourself for impending death." Maybe that was only in my head...
I got wheeled into the ER, and despite my violent shivering (have I mentioned it was like 5 degrees and I'd been without movement for 20 minutes and drug through freezing snow?!?), they asked me to take off my pants/long johns, and put on a pair of paper shorts. Sexy. And should you be wondering, I was told by 6 people not to wear the shorts in a hot tub because they disintegrate. Huh? Firstly, who's wearing shorts in hot tubs? More importantly, who's wearing these hideous, one-size-fits-all-fat shorts in hot tubs?!?! Answer: Apparently, a lot of people.
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After an x-ray confirmed nothing was broken, the ER doc poked around a few times and I didn't have too much pain at that point. Just as I perked up to hope that he would say I hyper-extended my leg, he goes and throws out there that I'd torn my ACL. Great. Just great.
Tell me about it, Sweet Brown.
Now before any of you start to judge me a little for all my complaining about my first world problems of injuring myself while skiing in the midst of behavior problems with my perfectly healthy yet precocious two-year-old, let me just say that overall, we had a LOT of fun. I know that can be hard to believe, but Henry finally broke out of his funk after two days (and the appearance of his father) and was back to his normal, fun self. Walter never gave anyone one ounce of problems. And my family was amazing and dove in and helped us as needed. I have SO much to be thankful for, and there were plenty of laughs and smiles on our trip.
Henry got his first REAL experience with snow.
Pretty good snow angels for a two-year-old, if I do say so myself!
Walter also turned into the real-life Ralphie from A Christmas Story. Remember "I can't put my arms down!"? Well, he had on so many clothes when he came to see us on the slopes that they apparently couldn't get him to sit without propping him up. And he was completely expressionless and lifeless. He did this for a solid 30 minutes:
He would only move his eyes, and had me laughing so hard I couldn't stand it. Kids can be so weird.
Walter mastered climbing the stairs while we were there. Can he go up? Of course. Can he go down? Nope. Sounds dangerous.
Walter also mastered pulling himself up and standing, which is all he does now.
He also learned to bang on pots and pans while we cooked - ALWAYS a useful distraction when you're in the kitchen.
Gigi spent a lot of time feeding the boys for us, which was such a huge help! She also created her own high chair. I discovered that high chairs are a very under-rated product. I didn't realize what a necessity ours was until we didn't have one...
And some of the most fun was watching the boys play and entertain each other. They've become big buddies, and no longer completely ignore each other when they're playing.
Every once in a while 5 minutes or so, we have to intervene so Henry doesn't get too out of control when Walter curiously picks up whatever toy Henry's playing with. So far, we haven't had any epic battles. I can sense that one of those is riiiigghhttt around the corner, however, so I'm thankful Walter's a huge baby so he should be able to hold his own when that occurs.
The best part of the trip was being able to just spend time together. When everyone lives across the country, it's nice to cook a meal and lounge and eat together!
And some people got some important wedding details hammered out... YAY!
And there's nothing like seeing your little ones get lots and lots and lots of attention!
Paul was even lucky enough to celebrate his 31st birthday traveling from Denver to Dallas, all while eating a gourmet McDonald's lunch. What a guy! Love him.
Unquestionably, it was an adventure of a weekend. I'm going to hope our next family adventure is a little less adventurous and a little more boring relaxing.
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