SKIING!

Winter has started in the mountains.  Our family went to Arapahoe Basin to ski this past Saturday.  I had never been skiing in October before.  What a treat! 

Now let's back up a little and discuss the logistics of skiing with a 1 year old.  When having kids, families weigh the pros and cons of all the great and difficult things that will happen when that baby arrives.  For an outdoorsy family like ours, we don't care much about the fact that our nightlife has ended since having Rachel (well, for us it ended before she was in the picture, really.)  But we have wondered: will we still adventure outside?  Can we still camp, hike, bike, run, and ski?  I think so far we're doing pretty well with all these things.  But downhill skiing is one activity that Rachel cannot join us on (yet).

Here are our options for downhill skiing:
1) One parent goes skiing and the other parent stays home with the baby.
2) Nobody goes at all.
3) Pay a lot of money to put baby in childcare at the ski hill.
4) Try to find childcare in town and leave baby there for a full day while we take off out of town.
5) Try to find a friend to take baby for the day near the hill while we go skiing.
6) Take the baby to the lodge and take turns skiing and babysitting.
7) Go with another family and all the adults take turns skiing and babysitting.
We chose the last two options.  It's a 90 min drive from our house to ski country.  We left at about 8am and lugged all of our stuff into the lodge and set up camp.  Jason took the first turn skiing while Meggan stayed with Rachel in the lodge, and then we alternated.  Friends of ours managed to make it up to the hill just after 12 noon with their baby and then couples switched off. 

The lift line up around lunch time

Skiing in October, just before Halloween, proved to be entertaining.  Costumes, beer and music surrounded us.  The sun shone and the weather was a comfortable day.  Only one lift and two runs were open, with a base of about 18" but decent conditions on the runs.  The line ups were hideous.  The attitudes were ecstatic.  All around, college students could be heard cheering and shouting things like "Whoa Man.  That was AWESOME!"  You'd think we all had the best turns of our life.  Jason and I each got in a total of 3 short runs all day long.  And it was, seriously, awesome.

Rachel also had a super time.  She had books, toys, food, and an adult for 1:1 entertainment.  She walked all around the lodge and climbed up and down the stairs.  She got to beat up on her buddy Aidan and snuggle with our friends Sarah and Dustin.  She was so excited about all the goings-on that she refused to nap.  This caused us to cut our day short a little early and get back to the car, where Rachel fell asleep before we even left the parking lot and peacefully slept all the way home.
We're excited to try it again soon.  Keystone opens Nov 5th and Breckenridge opens Nov 12th.