I can 't believe it's already been a month since we went to Utah. Obviously, I haven't been very good about blogging lately, so now I'm finally going to get caught up on our Christmas break. Colt got a two week break from school so I took two weeks off too!
We had talked about maybe going skiing several times in the past year. I had never been skiing or even really seen snow besides what we get in Texas, and he hadn't been skiing since he was a kid. A lot of his classmates at UTSW are from Utah so when we talked about going skiing they said we should go there rather than New Mexico or Colorado. We thought about it for a while and one of his classmates, Brock, offered for us to stay with his family while we were there, so we went ahead and booked it. We left on the 18th, the day after Colt got out of school for Christmas, and we flew back on the 23rd.
We flew to Salt Lake, and we drove our rent car to Draper where Brock's family lives, which was about 30 minutes from there. The first day we got there, we were exhausted because we had had a Christmas Party the night before at Colt's mom's house, and then we stayed up packing, and Colt stayed up playing video games with Gerald even after I finally went to bed! After we got to Brock's family's house, we took it pretty easy the rest of the day. We visited, took a nap, got our ski rentals, and had dinner that night at Cafe Rio. This was the place that everyone said we HAD to eat while we were there. It's kinda similar to our Chipotle, but more enchilada style... I guess you could say. I liked it, but the pork that everyone told us to get was too sweet for me, and Colt of course is definitely still a Chipotle guy!
Here are a few pics on our way from the airport to Draper.
Colt wanted me to take a picture of the sign for Las Vegas.
And this is the view from the front door of Brock's family's home. It was beautiful.
Colt getting in our economy car to go rent our skis. We rented an economy car because it was cheap, and we didn't know you had to have either a 4 wheel drive or chains to get up the mountains. We do now though!
Cafe Rio
Sunday, we had scheduled to go to Snowbird to ski. We borrowed Brock's family's car and went up there. It was definitely not the BEST day in the world. The day started with me taking about 30 minutes to get my gloves on. I had borrowed Brock's sister's gloves and hadn't tried them on at home before. Evidently, they were a little snug and it took Colt forcing them on my hand to get them on... so the day started out with him not being too happy with me! We got our tickets and finally found Chickadee, which was an easy little hill for me to learn how to ski on. Everyone had told me to take lessons and to not let Colt teach me, but Colt thought that I would learn easy and he wanted to try and teach me without lessons. He taught me the basics, and whenever I would get frustrated I would say don't you think I should go take lessons. He just kept saying just see if you get it and if you don't, then you can go take lessons. I fell a few times, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. After about six times down, I was comfortable and doing pretty good. Colt and I both thought that I was ready for something more so we rode one of the chairlifts up, and it was snowing/raining pretty hard. We decided not to get off halfway up the lift because Big Emma was at the top of the lift and it was supposed to be a green, and Colt thought I would be able to do it. When we got to the top and got off the lift, Colt went down first. It was steep and he realized this was not a green, at least not that day. He went down, turned around, grinned and told me to come nice and slow. I started down, made my first turn and went head over heels! I flipped over and ended up going down the hill on my back probably about 30 feet ...bouncing the whole way. Luckily, there was a ton of snow so it didnt hurt too bad, but I did jam my thumb I think, and I lost one of my skis. Colt brought me my ski and tried to help me up. Well... he had thought it would be a quick trip up and down the mountain and he had to go to the bathroom right then! So he had to leave me and go down to some trees to go to the bathroom. In the meantime, a man came and tried to help me get my ski back on. He's telling me what a bad day it is to learn with the weather and so on. It's snowing so hard that he kept cleaning out my ski where I could get my boot in and it just kept filling back up before I could get it in. Another man that worked there came up after a little while to help so then I had two men holding me trying to get me back in the ski. It probably took me about 30-40 minutes to get my ski back on! I was tired and just done with the whole idea of skiing by that time! We finally made it down the mountain and I was just falling every two seconds. We got to a true green that I probably could have done earlier, but I wasn't even trying anymore. I fell off to the side and snow was up to my knees so I just sank. I couldn't get up (or Colt says I wasn't even attempting to get up), and I was yelling at him to come get me! At the same time, a little 6 year old boy had came up to Colt and was crying because he was lost and couldn't find his dad. Colt was trying to console him while I'm yelling over his shoulder. He gets me up, and then we all three head down the mountain... Me, the boy, then Colt. Instead of just getting to be done, we have to take the lift back up, and then go down to where we need to get the little boy, and it took us FOREVER! Needless to say, after that our ski day was over, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to go skiing again the rest of the week! That night we were told that we should have went to a couple of other places that were easier resorts and better for beginners, but it was a little late for that.
Some pics on our way up to Snowbird
And a couple of pics before we started our eventful day!
On Monday, since we didn't have a 4x4, we had planned on catching a bus up the mountain and going up to one of the easier resorts. Well, we didn't know where we were going and one of the roads was closed due to avalanche control, so we got to the bus about 5 minutes too late. The next bus wasn't until 1 or 2, and the lifts close at 4:30 so we just drove back home! We were trying to figure out something else to do, so they suggested possibly mountain biking. We got geared up to go again, and then there were flats on the bikes! They were European or something and we didn't want to mess with trying to get them aired up so that idea was out. Colt called Ryan and Lainie, another couple that were staying about 5 minutes from us, and asked for suggestions. We had plans with them that night but there was still the whole rest of the day. I think they felt bad for us, and they ended up coming to get us to go to lunch on their wedding anniversary! We went to California Pizza Kitchen. Then we decided to go ice skating, well they were all closed in the area, and then we though about sledding but there wasn't enough snow, so we resorted to bowling!
Ryan and Lainie
Colt
Colt won the 1st game.
Ryan won the 2nd .. so of course they couldn't leave it a tie.
The lady at the bowling alley came and said we had time for another game and she would "let" us play another one. We thought it was going to be free by the way she talked, but she fooled us and it wasn't!
Colt won the last game, and I'm sure if he hadn't have been in a good mood about winning, he would've said something to her.
Later that night we met back up with Ryan, Lainie and Lainie's family. We ate at In-N-Out burger and headed to Salt Lake to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. It was pretty, and we had a great time. Thanks to Ryan and Lainie for saving us that day because we definitely didn't know what we were going to do!
On the train on the way to see Temple Square and the Christmas lights
The four of us
Colt and I
Ryan and Lainie with Lainie's family
Tuesday we went skiing with Ben and Debbie at Snowbird. Colt actually got to really ski for the first time on our trip, and it was a much better skiing day for me. You would've never thought I had such a bad day on Sunday, and I even had a few people say I didn't look like a beginner! It was a lot of fun that day. Some of Ben and Debbie's family went which was good because we had a few people at each level of skiing, and we got some beautiful pics that day! I even got some video of Colt and Ben attempting to do 360's.
Us with Ben and Debbie
Ben, Debbie, and Ben's brother with his horns on
Colt and I
Me having a much better day than Sunday!
Ben and Debbie
Beautiful pic!
Ben and Debbie again
Ben
The two of us on the lift
That night Brock got into town. His dad took us all to dinner at Cafe Rio, and later the boys put together and played with a race track that Brock's dad had bought for Christmas. They also played with it again the next day when Brock's brothers were there. I think I need to start buying Colt toys for holidays.
On Wednesday, our last day there, we drove up to Ogden to ski at Powder Mountain. It was me, Colt, Brock, both of Brock's brothers,and four other guys that were family and friends of theirs.... so it was me and a bunch of guys. The weather was supposed to be pretty and we didn't even take our camera out of the truck so we have no pics of that day. Colt went with me down the first time and then the course was set up so we could go our seperate ways and meet back up at the chair lift, which worked out perfect because I could go down the blues and greens and relax and take it easy while they all went and did their thing. They went down where there were rails and cars to jump off and that kind of stuff. I'm really surprised Colt didn't hurt himself because he was attempting to do everything! He had a really good time, but his neck was hurting by the time we left that afternoon. It was a great trip and we really appreciate Brock's family for letting us stay and appreciate everyone for showing us a good time while we were there!
Long post.. but there was a lot to blog about and we took a lot of pics!
