Spring Break Skication!

Apparently I only blog about vacations, and I haven't even finished the last one, but we got back on Friday from a quick Spring Break trip to Colorado for some skiing and family time and it was completely wonderful and I have to write it down.

For the first time in forever (or maybe ever ever, now that I'm thinking about it) we flew to Colorado instead of driving. I have so many points from my work trips that I could fly us all for free and rent a car for free and since James and Landon had a swim meet up until late Sunday night, and I wanted to be back before the next weekend to catch up on work, that only gave us five days to work with. We never mind the drive, but it definitely takes more time, especially when we're heading all the way up to the mountains and not just stopping in Boulder to see my sister. The only catch was that was that we actually had to check our bags. Ski stuff is voluminous - our helmets alone filled a duffel bag! We've gone to Italy and Egypt for two weeks with nothing but a carry-on suitcase each, but we go to Colorado for four nights and two days of skiing and next thing I know we're checking six bags. Madness.

The flight was quick and easy, the rental car process was shockingly smooth (thanks Alamo!), and we were on the road driving up to my parents' house by noon. Tabernash is about 2 hours from Denver, so we stopped in Idaho Falls for lunch at our favorite restaurant and then continued on our way. We drive past the store where we rent our ski equipment on the way to their house, so my parents met us there so we could pile our skis and boots (and James's board) into their car since ours was full of suitcases and duffel bags. We realized the night before we left that Landon's ski jacket was way too small (weird that I keep being surprised that he's grown in the last year) so we stopped a store having a big sale across the street and bought him one that should last many more years. He's a Men's Extra Large! Also madness.

After a quick stop at the store for lunch stuff (we always pack our lunches, food on the mountain is a million dollars) we finally got to my parents' beautiful home in the mountains! Even with the stops for food, gear, and more food, we were happily hanging out in their living room playing a dice game only 6.5 hours after we left our house in Dallas. The drive alone is normally 14.5 hours, so this was nice!

My parents added a new room to their house last year and this was our first time seeing it. Located halfway underground and next to the garage, the kids now have a bigger bunk room and my parents have an office and spot for my mom to do her morning yoga. It's all very lovely and comfy.

We ate a tasty homemade dinner, took a dip in the hot tub, and as seems to happen in the mountains, were in bed by 8:30 pm for no reason other than all being strangely exhausted.

Tuesday morning dawned with clear skies and 0 degree temps (practically balmy for Tabernash), and we were packed up and out the door a little after 8 am. Landon decided he wanted to learn to snowboard this year, so he had a group lesson starting at 9 and needed to pick up his rental board and boots in the village first. Crazy enough, as we were tromping through the village in our ski boots, we saw a giant mama moose! with a baby! It was so shocking I thought at first it was a statue, but then she moved to eat some grass.

Several Winter Park guides were standing around making sure people stayed far away. We learned from someone else at the ski school that mama has been hanging around all winter. She's kind of a VIP. Everywhere she goes in the village guides make sure no one comes near her and she is the only moose trying to eat all the remaining branches and leaves. Kind of brilliant really.

We dropped Landon off at school and then James, me, and the girls headed up the mountain in the gondola!

The girls remembered how to ski (something they're always wondering as we go up the gondola for run 1) and the weather was so nice. My parents meet us at the top of the mountain after run 2 and we skied together for an hour or so, warming up and enjoying the views. Since we needed to meet Landon at lunch when his lesson ended, and I didn't know how much help he would need from his boarder-dad once he joined us, I released James to go ride alone for a couple hours before meeting up with us at 1 pm.

His favorite thing in the whole world is to skip lunch, eat a PBJ on the lift, and then walk/ride a snow cat up to the highest steepest mountain ridge and board down it. I used do that when we were dating so he'd think I was cool and adventurous, but there is no way in hell I'm skiing down a back bowl chute anymore. Happy for him though!

My sexy boarder [kissy emoji].

Those of us uninterested in flirting with death or dismemberment ate our packed lunches at a picnic table in the village where Landon joined us. He told he was now an expert snowboarder, but it's possible that wasn't quite (yet) accurate.

After some stops and starts (and stops, and flat out refusals to stand up), Landon started moving pretty well!

Cora was rapidly morphing into a speed demon just like her Gigi, so we sent her off with my fast-skiing-parents while James, Claire, Landon, and I stuck to some nice greens.

(That's Cora and my mom on the horizon, heading off down a steep cliff.)

Cora also did her first black with my parents! And then did several more.

I love how she skis with her jacket open. Like a little superhero cape flapping behind her.

We wrapped up the day, heading out as the lifts were closing and our legs were tiring!

Another delicious meal at home, some hot tubbing, more cards and dice games, and an early bedtime capped off a perfect Day 1.

Ski day 2 dawned just a blue and beautiful. We'd decided the night before that Landon could use more snowboarding instruction from someone who isn't related to him, so he headed off for a second day of ski school while the rest of us headed up for some skiing as a group.

(That's my dad, mom, Cora, and James in the lift ahead of me and Claire.)

This was an excellent decision because when we headed back up the mountain after lunch on Day 2, he was doing so great! He had learned how to turn! And stop! And go! 300% improvement all around.

Cora was still craving speed and James (who had done his back bowls twice before lunch) is always on board for blacks, so they headed off with my parents to a more challenging peak, while I stayed with Landon and Claire to do greens and blues. I can do blacks, but I'm just as happy (and increasingly, maybe even happier?) to stay on easy slopes and just enjoy the gorgeous scenery and keep things effortless.

We had a really great time.

When Claire and I were done, Landon wasn't, so he joined up with James and Cora while Claire and I walked around the village. The mountain finally closed and kicked them off and we all headed home to join my parents who had left a little earlier. We went out for a wonderful dinner at a restaurant in town, followed by cards back at the house. It was the perfect end to our ski adventure.

On Thursday we enjoyed a lazy morning. The kids slept in, I did some work, and we all had a great breakfast before packing up and heading to Boulder to see my sister, brother-in-law, and their three girls.

We took the route that takes us on Highway 6 along Clear Creek Canyon. There's a rock there we've tried to find on every Colorado road trip since our first one in 2012. Sometimes we aren't on that road, and sometimes we can't find the rock (we refuse to mark its location; the finding while driving is part of the fun), but this year we found it and swung over to the shoulder to climb out for a picture.

And then I took a little trip down memory lane for our past photos: 2022, 2017, 2015, 2012.

It was a gorgeous day and we arrived at my sister's just as the girls were getting home from school. The kids played outside for hours and hours. My sister and I took a long walk. We ate dinner on the back porch, and sat by the fire drinking wine and chatting after dinner was done. It was a lovely stop.

We left her house at 7 am for our 9:30 flight and pretty much walked onto the plane. I forgot how long everything takes at DIA, but we made it and were home by 1 pm. I had work calls starting at 2, the kids immediately started making plans with friends, and we were happily ensconced in our Dallas life once more. Though if I could find a way to pick up this life and make it work in the Colorado mountains (and if Cora would possibly forgive me for making her move again), I'd do it in a heartbeat for sure!

Happy Spring Break 2025! Back to reality we go...

Egypt Day 8: The Great Pyramids of Giza and Saqqara

About halfway through our trip someone asked me on Facebook if I had a favorite day so far and at the time I said I couldn't pick. But then Day 8 happened and it was my favorite of all.

I don't want to bury the lede: WE WALKED AROUND THE GREAT PYRAMIDS! We rode camels! We saw the oldest complete stone structure IN THE WORLD! We ate Egyptian food for 3 delicious meals! It was the best damn day.

We woke up early (of course! 5:30 am! one of our later alarms!) at The Conrad to a bountiful buffet breakfast- Landon's favorite thing in the whole world, and said hello again to our Cairo guide (Mohamed), Egyptologist (Ayman), and driver (different Mohamed), all of whom we had met during our half day in Cairo at the start of the trip.

We piled in our van and headed out to Giza, which is part of Cairo, but thanks to the insane Cairo traffic, takes about 45 minutes to get to. The weather was cold and windy- we were clearly not in Aswan anymore and I was underdressed, but standing before us was one of the wonders of the world, the Great Pyramids, so it was okay. I loaned Cora my jacket because she was freezing and I was feeling generous and brave while faced with such human achievement.

There are so many facts and so much history behind these structures, but in short: it took 100,000 workers a year for 20 years to build one pyramid.

A single large pyramid contains 2.3 million blocks of stone, weighing between 3.5 - 17,000 tons each.

The pyramids used to have a completely smooth layer over all the blocks and scientists debate what it was made of and how they did it, but it was destroyed with time and earthquakes so only the blocks underneath remain.

It’s impossible to feel the scale of the pyramids in pictures but they are HUGE and we are small and I don’t know how they could have been built 4,000+ years ago. Simply amazing.

Though competing for the sheer amazingness of pyramids: dogs! It was hard to tear the girls away.

(Look how tiny the people are compared to that pyramid!)

After wandering around the pyramids and listening to lots of stories from our guide, we got back in our van and drove to Panorama Point where you can see all 9 pyramids before you. There are lots of vendors offering camel rides and the whole scene is pretty chaotic.

Our guide knew a man who owned his own four camels and took good care of them, so he waded into the insane morass of people, yelling to his buddy in Arabic. We waited around a bit and then suddenly it was our turn on the camels! They looked healthy and content, so we all climbed aboard- with Cora and I sharing a camel and everyone else getting their own.

My camel was the tallest and very proud of himself, Claire and Landon’s camels were very smiley, and James’s camel preferred not to be touched on his head. They were awesome and so were the views.

Insane to be riding a camel and have a bunch of pyramids photobomb your selfie behind you.

Camels don't move particularly fast and the ride is MUCH more uneven than it looks from afar, but we really enjoyed getting to ride on them and experience travel over that smooth fine sand. It was SO windy- my dress literally could not have been a worse thing to wear- but truly nothing could dull how happy I felt experiencing the pyramids. >

Next up was a papyrus shop where we learned how it’s made (very cool) and bought a piece for the house that's now hanging in our entryway. Then it was lunch buffet at a private club that used to be an extravagant personal residence and had many locals dancing to music around the pool. “Welcome to Alaska!” everyone kept saying when they greeted us (it was 55 degrees out). The pool was beautiful, but definitely no one was swimming.

Finally we drove to Saqqara Necropolis to see the Pyramid of Djoser, or Step Pyramid, which is the oldest complete stone complex in the world. It was built before the smoother ones we saw that morning. Apparently the pharaoh had an idea to build it an basically left it to everyone else to figure out how.

The Great Sphinx, also a giant miraculous structure, guards it well.

The Step Pyramid has some ancillary buildings you can walk through. It was interesting to compare the surrounding temples to those we saw along the Nile. The much older one in Saqqara had no hieroglyphs, no paints or colors, no etchings… just flat columns and smooth walls. The tools and techniques of the elaborate temples in the south hadn’t been developed yet. It's crazy to think the ancient structures were were in just days before were "new" by comparison.

We had a few other stops and a great dinner at the hotel followed by bed time at 9 pm because we were WIPED. It was such a cool day, I remain in awe these wonders exist and we got to see them!