We were determined to have a white Christmas and decided that there was no better way to achieve this than to fly out to Colorado. On Parker’s birthday, we got up bright and early, drove to Charlotte, and boarded a plane bound for the Centennial State. We arrived and headed over to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We celebrated Parker’s birthday with a big meal at Hapa Sushi.
The next morning, we loaded up and headed west with a final destination being Copper Mountain Resort. Along the way, we stopped at the Littleton Museum. We stopped for lunch at the Mountain Lyon Cafe in Silverthorne and then pushed on to Copper. We arrived and walked into some of the stores while we waited for our room to be ready. The next morning, we got up early and headed to the West Village to get Parker and Ansel checked in for ski school. After they were settled, Kristie and Jay jumped on the chairlift and headed up the mountain for a great day of skiing. The next two days followed the same pattern. The skiing was fantastic and we enjoyed relaxing at night in our condo.
On Christmas Eve, there was a lights parade where all of the ski instructors skied down the mountain holding red lights. This was followed by a fireworks show. Afterwards, we went back to our condo and relaxed for the rest of the night. We woke up Christmas morning to a white Christmas! It was snowing pretty hard and continued to snow for the entire day. Santa was able to find us and brought Parker and Ansel CamelBaks and some games. We all ate a big breakfast and then headed out to the slopes. Parker and Jay started off together and Kristie and Ansel paired up for a morning of skiing. We met just before lunch and made a couple runs together. We were amazed at the progress that both kids had made with their skiing. After lunch, Jay and Ansel made a few runs off of the Lumberjack lift and Kristie and Parker headed up to some of the bigger trails on the mountain.
We took the day after Christmas off and headed to Frisco to look around. The next day, Parker was not feeling well so he and Kristie took the day off while Ansel took another ski lesson. With everyone well, Parker and Ansel took lessons on Wednesday. When we picked Parker up from his lesson, we learned about some of the extreme runs that he had made during the day. His instructor even told us about the moguls that he was doing!
Thursday, we tackled the mountain for our last day. Ansel has progressed to the point that she can ski all over the mountain so we were able to pretty much stay together the entire day. We broke up a few times so that Parker could show us some of the runs that he had been on the previous day. Tired we returned to our condo for our last night in CO.
The next day, we drove back to Denver. Along the way, we stopped at Dinosaur Ridge and walked around. The temperature was in the 60’s which reminded us that our 20 degree days were coming to an end. Afterwards, we made our way to the airport and flew back to Charlotte.
Jay will add a video of the kids skiing at some point (probably in June). Until then, enjoy the pictures of our trip.
