Christmas Vacay Day 2 & 3

This is going to just be a quick post since I am whooped!! I am having the time of my life (and the weather of my dreams!) and trying to even begin to capture my excitement in a blog post seems near impossible. I'll give it a shot...


Yesterday we enjoyed an amazing breakfast together (my mom has been absolutely rockin' the breakfasts this week!) before loading up and heading over to the Park City area for an afternoon of snowmobiling. Ryan & Cheri each took one of the kids on their snowmobiles and Bryce & Dad rode together. Mom stayed and watched Emily at the lodge, and I rode solo (the guide called me "hotrod" for it! I gladly accepted the title with great honor. :)). I'll be honest, as much as I was looking forward to the amazing scenery (and it was DEFINITELY amazing!), I was way more concerned with my need for speed. As soon as the instructor started giving his "safety" speech, etc., my hand was up. I wanted to make sure we were all clear that we need to go fast. Really, really fast. Let me tell you - it did not disappoint in the least! First off - we rode all the way to the very top of the mountain, which was a very curvy, steep, long climb. Second, we rode as fast as we could to get up there :). It was exhilirating! Bryce & I both agreed that we need to own one of our own in the future :). The only downside of the trip was when we came to a snowmobile that had gone off the path around a sharp curve. Cheri was ahead of me and stopped - and then I stopped behind her to see what she was looking at. At first we thought it was just a snowmobile that someone had left - and then we heard screaming and someone yelling help! So we jumped off to help, but couldn't lift the snowmobile off the girl's arm ourselves - so thankfully Bryce & Dad had turned around and were able to help lift it. Everyone was okay - no broken bones, just scrapes & bruises. I cleaned & bandaged one of the girl's foreheads while another guy & my dad patched up the other girl's leg. I'm thinking they may not be snowmobiling again in the near future. I think they were pretty traumatized...understandably. We finished off the day with a trip to historic main street downtown Park City. So quaint, so cute, loved it.


Today was forecasted to be a major snowstorm, but we figured - heck, skiing is meant for snow, so more snow (especially fresh powder!) makes for even better skiing :-). We loaded up bright & early to get to the shuttle and head up to Solitude. It was already snowing pretty hard at that time and just got progressively heavier and heavier throughout the day - which was pretty spectacular (we skiied for 6 hours and it snowed at least 2 inches per hour!)! At one point we headed up to the top of a long run and it was snowing so hard with a combination of some serious wind gusts that you could hardly see anyone on the hill skiing in front of you! It was CRAZY fun! Now, I'll admit, I am pretty rusty and we didn't take much of a "warm-up"...so the first run or 2 were pretty rough (aka - I was TERRIBLE!), BUT I didn't wipe out at any point and it got progressively better and more fun as the day went on. In fact, we're heading out to Alta in the morning and I'm really excited about it! I know I still need LOTS of practice, but hopefully there will be lots of skiing in my future and that will take care of itself!

Other than that we've been hanging out as a family - each taking a turn cooking dinner for the fam, relaxing in the hot tub, playing corn hole, watching movies, and sitting by the fire. I'm absolutely enjoying every bit of this vacation and hope that it's something we repeat many more times in the future!