​Everything is better fresh. Pasta is no different. Every once in a while, you just have to bite the bullet and spend some time making food. I think one of the greatest weakness of our society, is that we sacrifice time in the kitchen for ease. There is something cathartic about spending time making your food from scratch. Making pasta is one of those things that is just fun to do and super rewarding in the end. Fresh pasta just tastes so much better than store bought pasta. Plus, when you have lots of kids, they can pick up the mess!

​Written by Mike

​In anticipation of our upcoming Germany trip, Mike and I realized that we needed new passports since ours expire in May of this year. We decided to pay a little extra to have ours expedited. I was amazed when they showed up less than 3 weeks later. 

​Madeline just loves to play in the snow. It doesn’t matter if it is freezing outside, she is always up for building a snowman. Luckily Abby also loves to play out in the snow. Those two have become quite the pair and I love that Abby is always willing to put on her snow gear to go outside and play with Madeline and build cute little snowmen. 

​Peter and Emma signed up to participate in our Stake’s Best of Youth. Since Emma is now 14 years old this was her first time being able to go and her very first church dance. Both of them had a good time.

There are many ad posters at the hospital at UC Health but there is one that Mike has seen many times. It is of a girl in yoga clothes doing a handstand. When he got on the plane to head to Hawaii, this same girl just so happened to be sitting next to him. He immediately recognized her. When they got to Hawaii, she did a handstand at the airport for him just to be funny. What are the odds that he would meet the girl from the ad he had seen so many times at Memorial hospital?

​This was Madeline’s second time at the dentist, and she did great. She was so excited to get her teeth checked. I sat in the chair with her again this time and she let the dental hygienist and the dentist count all of her teeth and clean her teeth. She was really excited by her new toothbrush and her fun little toy. The kids just love Dr. Patterson.

​Grandma Anne is so fun and always sends the kids something fun for Valentine’s Day. This year she put red and pink M&M’s in a heart shaped cake mold and then took a $5 and folded it into an arrow. She added some other fun candy as well. The kids loved their cute gifts. 

​The girls shower and sink were not draining very well so Mike decided to unclog all the pipes by unscrewing them and trying to get all the junk out. He did that to most of our bathroom sinks.  For the shower we poured liquid plumber down the drain but when we realized that the shower was still backing up, I decided to grab the drain snake to see what was clogging the shower drain. To my disgust, I pulled out a super long hair clog. It almost made me throw up. Grouse. 

​Our cross fit class usually starts with the first half of the class being warm and working through the motions to remember proper form. When it comes to the main set, things move at a really fast pace. We usually do sets in a certain period of time or a certain number of reps or sets and then record our time. It is a common occurrence to keep track of our reps or weights with chalk. There is no way I could remember everything without using chalk. 

​Peter went to swim practice one day straight from his Jazz Festival. Since he was dressed up in his suit his teammates from swim thought it would be funny to do a pretend photoshoot with his swim cap on in the locker room. The funny thing is that it actually looked like a photo from a senior photoshoot. 

​Mike and I learned about smoothie bowls when we were in Hawaii. It took me a few times, but I finally found the perfect combination of fruit in my smoothie and what fruit I liked best on top. I added unsweetened coconut and my homemade granola on the top. It was perfect!

I love running when the sun is rising. Caryn and I ran to Bear Creek Park with the Striders but instead of doing hill repeats on BFNH (Big Freakin Nasty Hill) we decided to do the tempo loop. It was so fun to just do a fun run together and enjoy the sunrise.

​I love how goofy Mike can be with Madeline. It is so much fun to watch her excitement when she plays with her dad.

​Sometimes, you just have to get out of the house. After asking the kids where they wanted to go, we decided (based on Madeline’s recommendation) to go to the zoo. We piled in the car and headed south, stopping at Panera bread for sandwiches, soup, and of course cookies. After eating lunch, we headed to the zoo, only to encounter a long line of cars headed up the mountain. It turned out, lucky for us, that the zoo was having a special rate and so it was very crowded. One of the advantages of going in the afternoon (other than it being warm) is that most families had already started heading out, so there was plenty of zoo for us to explore without lots of people. We started out by feeding the giraffes, which is always a highlight. Madeline was a bit scared to feed the adult giraffes, but she fed the baby giraffe...even though its about 6 feet taller than her. After the giraffes, we headed to the monkey house, but Madeline wasn’t having any of that because of the smell. We then went to the reptile house where Madeline was very excited by a king snake that was crawling around outside. She pulled up a little chair and just watched it slither around. She wasn’t scared at all. Then we went for a ride on the carrousel. Madeline spent the rest of the day asking if we could go back to the carrousel, so it clearly was a hit, even with the other kids. We saw a grizzly bear, snow leopard, tiger, lion, and cheetah. All the animals were out and about. One of the best things we did was feed the parrots and budgies. The kids got little popsicle sticks covered with seeds and then they fed that to the birds. We spent about 30 minutes trying to get the birds to sit on our hands or arms while we fed them. It was a lot of fun. We saw an alligator and got to pet a wallaby. In all, it was a pretty incredible day at the zoo and a fun day with the family.

We got up early and headed up to Grand Targhee Ski Resort to go skiing today. It only took 70 minutes to get there and there was no traffic whatsoever. The drive was also pretty spectacular, and we were in awe seeing the amazing Tetons. When we got there, I walked in and got my rental boots and demo skis and we headed to get our lift tickets. With the military discount they were only $45 a person. What a steal! We grabbed some snacks and water and shoved them into Andrew’s ski pack and headed up the Dreamcatcher lift so that we could head down the runs under the Blackfoot lift. One of the guys at the ski rental place mentioned that there were some great runs over that way. Well, that guy was so wrong. Maybe on a powder day those runs are great, but they were mostly icy when we went down them. We canned skiing on this side of the mountain and headed back over to Dreamcatcher and then skied down the other side of the resort until we made our way over to the Sacajawea lift. This side of the mountain was definitely where the adventure was to be had. There were a few runs that were powderier than others and overall, we had a great time skiing down the Snowdancer run and the Medicine Bowl run. With a little more powder, we would've skied down some of the black tree runs but there just wasn't enough snow for me to feel comfortable doing that, so we skied mostly blue runs. After eating lunch at the bottom, I swapped out my LINE demo skis for some VOLKL skis. I did not like the LINE skis at all. They were much too light for me. I had way more fun skiing after lunch on a better pair of skis. We skied pretty much until the lifts were almost closed. Then it was back in the car for a pretty easy drive back to Rexburg. I dropped Andrew off back at his apartment and then headed back to the hotel to shower and rest. We met up later at Da Pineapple Grill for some pretty tasty Hawaiian food. 

​Mike and I decided last minute that it would be a nice thing for me to fly out and visit Andrew at college for a few days. I flew into SLC and rented an SUV and drove the 3 ½ hours to Rexburg. I got in @ 6:00pm and checked into my hotel. Then I stopped by Andrew’s apartment and picked him up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had shaved but his hair was oh so long. It was probably the longest and most unruly hair I had ever seen on him. I guess he wouldn't be a college student if he weren't a little disheveled. I took him to Idaho Falls so that we could enjoy a nice meal at the Copper Rill. Our dinner was outstanding. We were so full that we didn’t even get dessert which is crazy because we both love dessert. 

​Spending everyday with Madeline never gets old. She is the light of all of our lives, and she keeps us thoroughly entertained. We learned some new hairstyles this month. She loves it when I do high pigtail buns with ribbons. We always do her hair that way when she goes to her ballet and tap class. We even do high ponytail braids and she loves that too. But it is not uncommon for her to just want her hair down and crazy. Every time she wakes up from a nap her hair is pretty wild. I try to put it up in a simple ponytail but most often she will pull it out. Her wild hair definitely fits her wild and fun personality. Even though she likes it wild, Madeline loves to pretend to do her hair with her own pretend hairdryer. She will often bring her make-up bag in my bathroom and do her make-up and hair when I am getting ready in the morning. 
 
Madeline loves running errands with me. She always goes with me when I go to get my nails done. She is the most popular little kid at the salon. They all know her by name now and Lin and Kim love to give her hugs. Jimmy always tries to sneak in little treats for her. After I get my nails done, we sometimes venture over to Athleta. It is always a fun store for me to shop in and on one particular adventure, Madeline decided it would be fun to copy all of the manikins. She was pretty spot on with all the yoga poses that each manikin was doing. It made me chuckle. 
 
This month Madeline discovered the love of popping packing bubbles. Every time a new package would arrive, she would ask to pop all of the bubbles. She would start by popping them with her fingers and would eventually arrive at stomping on the rest. I love watching the world through Madeline’s eyes. She is just so happy all the time.  

​We got up early and got all of our swim gear together and headed on over to Hanauma Bay for a fun day of snorkeling. We wanted to get there before the parking lot filled up. We made it by 8am and although we found a parking spot without any problems, the weather was iffy. It was raining, cloudy, and much too cool to sit by the water. So, we waited it out in our car for about 40 minutes. Then we headed into the park and found the most perfect spot on the grassy area behind the sandy beach where we strung up our hammock. By this point the sun was out and it was warm enough to get in the water. We grabbed our snorkels and headed out to explore the entire bay. Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay was incredible. We saw lots of interesting fish. It was such an incredible experience to snorkel across this entire bay. At some points the reef was incredibly shallow. We had to make like a board and float right on top of it. I was worried that I would get scratched on my belly but that never happened. At one point we saw an entire school of fish feasting on the reef. There were probably over a hundred fish in the group. We just followed them until they swam away. It was pretty neat. After about an hour of snorkeling I was starting to get cold, so we got out and warmed up in the sun and just laid in the hammock and snacked on fruit and nuts. We spent a good couple of hours just relaxing in the hammock and talking. Then Mike headed to grab us some lunch. By the time we were done eating, we were ready to get back in the water for one more round of snorkeling. It was really hard to leave the bay and head back to the hotel. I just didn’t want this day to end. Since I had a red eye flight back to Colorado, we had a little bit of time to eat one more dinner together and grab some treats to bring back home for the kids. We decided to eat at the Tonkatsu place just one more time. We got really lucky and grabbed the very last table at the restaurant. It was just as good as the first time and would have to last us until the next time we would be in Japan in the fall. It was hard to leave Hawaii and Mike, but I was super grateful I got to spend a glorious 4 ½ days soaking in the sun and spending quality time with my best friend.  

​This morning we actually slept in which was awesome. Then we put on our running clothes and headed out on quite a morning run. We ran all the way down Kalakaua Ave. until we came to Monsarrat Ave. and then turned toward Diamond Head. It was about 3 miles until we reached the entrance to Diamond Head State Park. Once at the bottom Mike was kind enough to let me run on ahead. I ran up until I got to the paid entrance gate. We both went in together and then once at the actual trail, we took off on a run up to the top. Since it wasn’t super early in the morning the regular crowds were out and about on the trail. It was fairly easy to continue running up the trail, having to stop here and there, to get around people. Once I reached the set of stairs, I waited for Mike who I knew wasn’t too far behind. For a brief moment I decided to just head up the stairs, then turned around because I thought I had better wait to ascend the last section together with Mike. Turns out that as I was heading down to wait for Mike, he was heading up. Neither one of us saw the other as we were so focused on our footing. I waited for another 5 minutes at the landing at the bottom of the stairs for Mike and then decided that I had better head up. It truly was crazy that we had missed seeing each other in passing. The views from up on top were ridiculous. As we were starting to head back down and small rain shower fell on us. It actually felt really good. We stayed together on the descent and were able to run most of the way down. We ran together all the way back to Kalakaua Ave where we stopped at Lanikai Smoothie for some amazing smoothie bowls. It was a smoothie on the bottom with a layer of granola and topped off with freshly cut up fruit. It was the perfect recovery meal. We walked over to the beach to eat our smoothie bowls and then walked back to our hotel along the beach. We got back and relaxed for a while before getting showered and ready to head to church. In typical Hawaiian fashion, someone must have been a little too relaxed and didn’t update the meeting house times on LDS tools because when we showed up at 1:00pm for church, no one was there.  Oh well…at least we tried. We hurried back to the hotel, quickly grabbed a sandwich and headed over to our sales presentation. It was more of the same as the Marriott presentation. We definitely were not interested in what we think is a total scam. However, we listened, got our free 25,000 Hilton points and headed on out to Ko’Olina for a nice evening of watching the sunset and dinner at Mina’s Fish House. The sunset was magnificent. We stood up on the rocks behind the Four Seasons and just watched as the sun went down. It was absolutely the perfect sunset. There were plenty of people out doing the same, even a recently married couple getting their photos taken. While we waited for our dinner reservation, we continued the walk down to the Marriott resorts and by the time we got back to the Four Seasons they were ready to sit us for dinner. Dinner started out a little rocky with a super casual and not very attentive waiter.  However, the food was pretty amazing and the views unparalleled. It was a beauty evening of eating dinner right next to the water and a great way to end our fun day.

​We got up early today and put on our swimsuits, grabbed our snorkeling gear and provisions for the day and headed out for a day on the east shore. With a quick stop at the airport, and to my surprise, we parked Mike’s government rental car at the airport and picked up a black mustang convertible for the remainder of my time in Hawaii. That was such a fantastic surprise. We drove on the Pali Highway towards Kailua. We stopped briefly at the Nu-uanu Pali Lookout and marveled at the beauty from where we were. It wasn’t much further from the lookout to the Kailua Beach Park where we found a parking spot before the lot filled up for the day. We got out and walked along the beach and then headed on the private roads to Lanikai Beach to see what it was like. Wow…Lanikai Beach was pretty spectacular. We spent some time walking on that beach before heading back to where the car was and then on over to Kailua rental center. We rented a double kayak, bought a cute double hammock, new swim goggles for me, and some Chums to keep our sunglasses secure while on the kayak.  We watched the safety video about kayaking in the area then loaded up our kayak on the wheeled dolly and headed back over to Kailua Beach. We loaded up our drybag with all of our food and extra clothing, secured our snorkeling gear in the kayak and then headed out into the ocean. It was fairly windy as we headed out to Popoia Island first. It took some time for us to find our groove paddling together but we made it safely to the island without too much trouble. We docked our kayak on the small sandy bank and got out to walk around the small bird sanctuary island. The view from the island was pretty remarkable. After spending a short time exploring this island we hopped back into the kayak and headed straight for Lanikai Beach. The original plan was to head on over to Moku Nui Island, but the winds were so strong that we decided to just hang out at Lanikai instead of kayaking against the wind for another hour. It was still fairly early in the morning and the beach wasn’t at all crowded - partially because it is not as accessible as Kailua Beach. It is a good 15 min walk from the Kailua Beach parking lot. After docking our kayak on the beach, we got on our snorkeling gear and headed out into the crystal-clear blue water and had fun seeing all the different kinds of fish swimming around the shallow reefs. It was pretty incredible to snorkel at Lanikai. We spent most of the day snorkeling and laying out in the warm sun. I can’t remember the last time I got to lay out in the sun without kids. I was really careful to put on sunscreen frequently so I wouldn’t burn. It was hard to want to leave the beach but eventually we headed back into the kayak and paddled back to where we started. It took no time at all to get back since the wind was in our favor. We returned the kayak, grabbed some ice-cream, and laid in our hammock for a while before driving back to Waikiki. We drove back via the Kalanianaole Hwy stopping at the Makapu’u Point State Wayside overlook to see the beauty of where we spent the day. It was a remarkable view from where we stood, and I just felt grateful that I got to spend the day with Mike. After showering and getting ready back at our hotel, we headed out again to eat dinner. We decided to stand in line to eat at Marukame Udon Tempura Musubi. Apparently, this famous Udon shop, always has a really long line out front. The good news was that the line moved rather quickly. We met some really nice people in line and that helped the time to pass quickly. The Udon was really tasty and definitely authentic. It seems crazy to be in Hawaii but feel so close to Japan. 

DAY 1

​​When Mike told me that he might be able to do his reserve duty at Tripler in Hawaii, I got right on trying to find someone to watch the kids so I could join him over the holiday weekend. In asking around, my awesome friend Dionne volunteered to come and stay with the kids with her son Lucas. I already knew Dionne was amazing, but I did not expect such a nice gesture. I got a direct flight from Denver to Honolulu on Thursday morning and got to Hawaii in the early afternoon. I grabbed an Uber and headed to our hotel where I met Mike after he was finished with work. When I got there, they had put is in the wrong hotel. After a rather long phone conversation with Hilton Grand Vacations, we got everything sorted out. We ended up staying at the Grand Islander at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort right on Waikiki. This was their newest tower and the feel was modern yet classy. In the mix up with the room, we ended up upgrading to a one-bedroom suite where we had our own kitchen area and lots of room to spread out. We wasted no time and headed right out to go for a walk on the beach. It was glorious to be somewhere so warm and peaceful. We walked all the way down the beach past the Hale Koa and then we headed towards the shopping strip and to the International Market Place which is a fairly new outdoor mall area with shops and restaurants. Mike had made a reservation for us to eat dinner at the Eating House which is one of Roy Yamaguchi’s restaurants. The food was outstanding, and it felt surreal to be eating outside. After an amazing dinner of steak and potatoes for me and scallops for Mike, we were too tired to wait the 25 minutes for some of their amazing desserts, so we grabbed the check and headed to the Japanese grocery store to buy our favorite Japanese ice-cream sandwich and devoured it on our walk back to our hotel. With the 3-hour time change, I was out like a light the moment my head hit the pillow.
 

​Instead of a big party with friends this year Emma decided it would be more fun to invite one friend to do something big. I took Emma and her friend Natalie up to Denver to go indoor skydiving at iFly. Both the girls were anxious but in a good way. After their instruction class they got suited up and were ready to fly. They each got 2 different flights, both one-minute long each, and the last one included a high flight with the instructor. They were all smiles the entire time. I was surprised at how quickly they picked up the correct form. Both of them had some moments where they were flying by themselves without the instructor holding onto them. 
 
Afterwards, we headed over to the Park Meadows Mall for some shopping before eating dinner. The girls went to a variety of stores but spent a good deal of time on the outdoor mall area taking photos in the various chairs and enjoying the sunset. We all ate dinner at the White Chocolate Grill, and it was delicious. We all shared the egg rolls and then the girls had hamburgers, I had their famous veggie burger, and we all shared the white chocolate brownie and the French white chocolate bread pudding for dessert. Emma was so happy with her fun filled day up in Denver with her good friend Natalie.

SKIING AT BEAVER CREEK . DAYS 1-2 (JAN 2-3) 

SKIING AT BEAVER CREEK . DAY 3 (JAN 4) 

SKIING AT BEAVER CREEK . DAY 4 (JAN 5) 

PAINTED MINES (JAN 20)

MADELINE IN JANUARY (JAN 1-31) 

JANUARY SLICES OF LIFE 

​Before Andrew headed back to school, I took his mission photo for his paperwork. He spent most of his Christmas break getting all of his appointments taken care of and filling out all of his mission paperwork. 

There is nothing better than starting out the New Year right with a fun run in the neighborhood. Mike and I ventured out to run our 3 mile loop up Royal Pine even though the weather was a bit cold. 

The kids were excited to start out the semester right and so they download a homework app that would help them remember which assignments would be due in their classes. 

After a few months of doing CrossFit with Mike at Cross Fit Continuum, I finally started to see some muscle definition in my arms. I have never been super fit in my arms and so I was really excited to see my hard work finally starting to pay off. 

This was month 2 of healthy eating with our cross fit team. One of my favorite dishes this month was fish tacos. I had that twice at Flying Horse. I tried to be really good about having salads for lunch every day and healthy snacks between bigger meals. For snacks, I tried to stick to a variety of vegetables mixed with my latest craving of grapes, specialty cheeses, and crackers. The key to eating healthy, though, was making sure I got in my 70-80 oz of water each day. That definitely took effort to drink that much water each day.

I have so many good memories of running with Caryn and Dionne this month. From our track workouts with Striders to our longer runs on the weekends, it is always a blast when I get to run with these two girls. They have become some of my best friends and I am super grateful for our friendship and our mutual love of running!

Nothing makes me happier these days than playing some sweet music on our new turntable. I was really excited when my new Billy Joel Greatest Hits vinyl came in the mail. I found an original 1985 vinyl in nearly mint condition. Madeline now knows who Billy Joel is because we play his music so much. 

I took Emma, Abby and Natalie to see the second Jumanji movie. It was actually pretty hilarious and fun. The girls posed in the Jumanji sign before the show started. They are a bunch of goofballs. 

I wouldn't say I am the one who can lift the most during CrossFit but I am fit when it comes to the interval type workouts. It has been fun to watch my improvement in the heavy weights. I maxed out the back squat at 135 lbs and I couldn't have been prouder of myself.

Emma's sweet church leader and her daughter decorated our front door for Emma's birthday. Each heart had sweet thoughts for Emma. It truly brightened up Emma's day!

Abby cut quite a bit of her hair off during her appointment and she was all smiles when she looked in the mirror. Her hair looked absolutely perfect on her. 

We took Emma to Biaggi's for her birthday dinner. While we were there, we gave her some fun gifts and let her open her present from Grandma Anne and Grandpa Franz. We got her a cute silver bracelet and a variety of good makeup and some fun face masks. Our main gift to Emma was a mountain bike that she still needs to pick out. She is super excited to learn how to mountain bike this year. From her grandparents, she got a brand-new jean jacket and a new bracelet. She was beyond excited by all of her gifts. 

​This was an exciting month with Madeline. It started out like any other month with errands, weekly ballet and tap lessons and plenty of imaginative play at home. I love how talkative Madeline is these days. She loves to talk so much that sometimes she makes up stories about what she has done or where she has been during the day. She will often use one of the kid’s friends in her made up stories. It is pretty darn hilarious. When Madeline isn’t wearing her favorite Frozen nightgown, she is usually seen wearing one of her play dresses. Her favorite is still the Elsa blue dress and cape, but she also loves the Cinderella dress. There really isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t ask me to help her put on one of her play dresses. She plays for a while and then she is onto the next thing. She loves all of her dress up things, especially her hello kitty rolling suitcase and her tap shoes. She wears the older and slightly too big tap shoes almost every day. Her good tap shoes stay in her class bag and she only gets to wear those on Thursdays when she goes to her ballet and tap class. She continues to love the ballet statue and there isn’t a time when she doesn’t kiss and hug that statue as we are leaving class. This month Madeline discovered Penny the Horse at the grocery store. I decided to finally give in and let her ride the pony after paying for our groceries. It was only a penny after all. She just loved riding the pony and so I made a deal with her that when she was good in the store, she would get to ride the pony afterwards. Let’s just say we had many good shopping days. Most of the month was spent with smiles and laughter and joy. However, there was a brief period where Madeline got really sick and was not herself for a few days in a row. She actually fell asleep on my bed mid-morning those days and just slept. Even being sick Madeline is still the cutest little curly haired girl I have ever seen.
 

​We adventured today to the Painted Mines to go walking and exploring with the kids. The last time we were at the Painted Mines was 5 years ago. This was Madeline’s first experience and she loved it. The older kids didn’t delay in exploring up and into the different geological formations. We technically weren’t supposed to be walking up on top of the formations, but we did it anyways, trying to be careful to not destroy anything we were walking on. It didn’t matter that we had been here before. Every formation seemed new to us. We all loved the different shades of yellow and pink. The brightly colored bands of clay, caused by oxidized iron compounds, are found throughout the entire park in formations including spires and hoodoos. The clay has an almost chalky feel to it. By the end of our exploring our pants were covered in what looked like chalk. We didn’t care, though, because this awesome Interpretive Park is pretty unique and amazing. We were lucky to be able to explore on a relatively warmer winter day. On our walk back to the car we shared the chocolate bar I had brought from home. That made for a great end to our adventure. 

​We put Madeline in one more day of ski school. She willingly went again, and we were so grateful. The rest of us, including Abby, skied straight out the back of the Charter to the Elkhorn Lift. We rode that and then skied the blue runs to get to the main area of the ski resort. We headed up to the top of the mountain and skied down the green runs, but this time Abby took us to some of her favorite runs that she did in ski school. We discovered that we really liked Powell and Piney. The kids had fun going through the Mystic Maze adventure zone. It was basically a fast and curvy narrow run through the trees. Mike and I went down it once and then enjoyed watching the kids speed down it. We had a really fun time skiing together. Eventually Andrew and Peter took off to go do the black runs off of Grouse Mountain while the rest of us stayed on the main part of the mountain until lunchtime. We headed back to the resort and ate lunch and by this point most everyone was tired from the last few days of skiing. When we picked up Madeline, she was beyond done with ski school. She had improved so much over the last few days. She completed everything on her checklist except stopping on command. She was pretty good about stopping some of the time and she even tried going down the steeper magic carpet run because her instructor thought she was ready. After one run of that she was ready to be done. Later that night Mike had a fun date planned for just the two of us. We took a sleigh ride up to Beano’s Cabin where we had the most fantastic dinner. It was a cold ride, but we cuddled together under the blankets and it was quite romantic. It was the perfect way to end our time up at Beaver Creek Resort. 

​We had initially only signed Abby up for one day of ski lessons but after such a great day in lessons we decided to give her one more day. She moved up to Level 5 and would be using poles so I ended up getting new poles and passed my old ones down to Emma who passed hers down to Abby. Abby was so excited when she found out that Garret would be her instructor again. She even found one of the girls she met the day before and immediately bonded with her. Madeline was a little more timid about riding in the elevator without me, but like a brave little girl, she went with the nice ladies without crying. 
 
The rest of us spent the morning riding the green runs up on the main part of the mountain like the day before. The reality is the blue runs were closer to the bottom and somewhat icy so we stayed as close to the top of the mountain as we could. After getting bored of the green runs, Emma, Peter, Andrew and I headed back over to the double black so that we could get to the Grouse Mountain Express Lift. Mike was a good sport and skied down some of the other runs while we tried the harder stuff. I didn’t like the double black as well as I liked it the previous day. But the kids thought it was pretty awesome. We took Emma on Screech Owl and she loved it. I got lots of photos of the kids going down the moguls and off the jumps before leaving them to head to the Spa at the Park Hyatt to sit in the hot tub with Mike. Since Mike booked us massages for the evening time, we had access to the spa all day. It was so nice to sit and relax before heading back to the resort to each lunch with the kids. Just like the previous day, we ate, relaxed, watched TV, and then Mike and I headed back to get the girls from their ski lessons. We made dinner for everyone and then Mike and I went to get our massages. That was the way to do it. It’s fantastic to have built in babysitters to watch Madeline. 

​We took our time in the morning getting everything ready and packing the car for our ski trip to Beaver Creek. We arrived around lunchtime and headed first to the grocery store for some lunch from the deli. We ate in the car and then headed to the Charter at Beaver Creek which is where we would be staying.  Since our room was not quite ready, we parked in front of the resort and then got on our ski gear and piled into the resort shuttle and headed over to the main ski area. Mike took Madeline first while I went up the mountain with the older kids. We skied up near the Red Buffalo Express Lift and did a few of the easy runs up there before Abby and I headed down to switch with Mike. The kids met Mike up at the Cookie Cabin and they skied until the end of the day. Madeline was pretty much done skiing when I got her and so we just waited at the bottom for the 3pm free warm cookies that Beaver Creek Ski Resort is known for. Madeline, Abby and I were in heaven. We decided to head over to the Charter via the shuttle to check into our room. We were pleasantly surprised by how nice the Charter was. We got settled and then Mike and Andrew headed to get groceries for the next few days.
 
On our first full day at Beaver Creek I got Abby and Madeline ready and headed on over to the ski base to get them checked into their ski lessons for the day. Mike bought Abby a one-day lesson and Madeline a 3-day lesson the previous day. After speaking with the instructors, we ended up putting Abby in Level 4. We wanted her to focus on more parallel turns. For this level, she didn’t need poles. Madeline went into the beginner level with the other 3-5-year olds. I was a little worried about how she would be when I had to say goodbye to her at the elevator. A sweet lady helped me label her skis and then she held Madeline’s hand and took her down to the kid center on the lower level of the resort. Madeline spent most of the day on the magic carpet with plenty of fun breaks like story time, snack time, and play time. Abby had a great time in her lesson and picked up a few new skis on parallel turns. She was excited that they made her one of the kid leaders and she had nothing but great things to say about her instructor Garret. 
 
While Abby and Emma were in lessons, the rest of us took the Centennial Express Lift to the Cinch Express Lift and to the Cookie Cabin Summit. We spent most of the morning skiing down the easy green groomers as that was where there was the most powder…so we thought. We skied down the Red Buffalo and Booth Gardens runs the most. After a few hours of exploring this area, Andrew, Peter and I headed over to the Grouse Mountain Express Lift via the double black Golden Eagle run. It was way easier since it was mostly powder. The steep moguls would have been nearly impossible without all the powder. Once on Grouse Mountain we skied down the single black Screech Owl twice. It was definitely more fun to navigate those moguls. The boys had fun speeding down the moguls and going off some jumps. From there we headed all the way back to the Charter via the Creekside Skiway. It was so much fun to ski all the way to where we were staying. We met Mike and Emma back at the room for a late lunch. By the time we ate and relaxed, no one really wanted to go back out. Mike and I headed back out to ski for just a little longer before picking up Madeline at 2:15pm from her ski school. We hopped on the shuttle and headed back to our resort to drop her off before heading back to pick up Abby at 3:00pm and grab our free warm chocolate chip cookie. We spent the rest of the day just chilling at the resort, watching movies, and eating. ​