easter weekend

tim is delighted with the whole process

Our friends the Brandt's contacted us early last week to see if we wanted to spend Easter at their condo in Breckenridge as no one was going to be using it. YES! YES! YES! The snow has been phenomenal this year and didn't disappoint in the days prior to our departure with lots of fresh powder falling daily. For my non-American readers, Good Friday and Easter Monday are not national holidays in the US, so Paul had to take Friday off and be back at work on Monday. I'd never heard of Easter Monday until I moved to Europe.

We started our holiday by coloring eggs with Timothy on Wednesday evening. Check out his blog of this from last year if you want to be reminded of how much he's grown.

this year the dye came with five plastic 'cups'

Mom put together Easter baskets filled with candy for them, (and a few treats for us as well), and I bought plastic eggs to fill with jelly beans and chocolate eggs and to hide in the back yard.

luke's first easter basket

our dye came with stickers too

We decided to do the egg hunting on Friday morning before going to the condo. Tim doesn't know the difference at this age, and I didn't want to haul all those eggs up there. We always leave some toy at the condo and the more we take the more likely we are to leave even more behind. It was a great decision because after several days of rain and more in the forecast, Friday dawned bright and clear. Luke actually found one egg all by himself. Tim was happy to share his booty.


hunting eggs

Driving up to the condo was pleasant with great weather and no traffic as everyone else was at work or in school. We got there with time for Paul to do some skiing and when he finished, we took the boys sledding. They both enjoyed it. We only saw the sign forbidding sledding on the ski run as we were packing up to leave on Sunday. Fortunately, it was very quiet on the slope, so I don't think we bothered anyone. We tried to stay to the sides.

getting ready to go sledding just outside the condo



sledding with dad

After sledding we took them to the condo clubhouse for a turn in the pool and hot tub. The hot tub was too hot for Tim, but Luke was happy to let Paul hold him while he soaked his muscles. Tim and I played in the pool. We took the inflatable car that we bought for him in Turkey back in '08, and he floated around in that. He invented a game. He sat on the top step in his car and told me to "Go under water on your front and be a mermaid." This meant that I swam underwater away from him and kicked the water once as I moved away. He would then push off the step and float after me, laughing. At first he told me to be a whale and I told him I would only play the game if he called me a mermaid. He needs to learn early how to please the ladies. We did this too many times to count, so many times, that Paul and Luke got dressed and went back to the condo. I finally made Tim stop when his lips started to turn blue and he couldn't talk for the chattering of his teeth. It's a heated pool, but you need to be in the water and moving around to combat the cool that hits the room when the sun goes down.

Saturday brought more snow. Paul had thought on Friday that he'd only ski Saturday morning and then we'd go to town for lunch; however, the snow was too good for skiing and too bad for town going, so he skied, stopped for a long lunch break with us, did some more sledding, and then skied some more.

last weekend of the season at breckenridge

The skies cleared around 16:00, and we made it into town for a walk along the main street and dinner. The city council was hosting an egg hunt for kids on the main street, and Tim found two eggs. He likes the Easter Bunny! Paul took Tim swimming again after we returned from town.



paul is holding the camera in one hand, two ski pole in the other and skiing on a black slope

I think it snowed all of Saturday night. Paul skied until about 11:00. We tried to go to the pool again, but it was closed. Tim handled the disappointment very well until I complimented him on it and he had a melt down. It seems we made it through two without too much trouble. Three is proving to be trying indeed.

spring in colorado

The back yard at 08:00


The back yard at 17:00



The front yard at 08:00


The front yard at 17:00

One of the things I love about Colorado is the weather. If you don't like it, give it a few hours and it will change.

a weekend in the spring

Like bears drawn out of their dark caves after a winter of hibernation seeking light and sustenance, so is the Attridge family drawn to the outdoors at the first sign of spring. Colorado has been very nice to us this year after one of the worst winters last year that I can recall. The daffodils are in bloom, the tulips are an inch out of the ground, and the willow and the aspen are competing for the award of first leaf in the yard this year.

Last weekend was the kind of weekend I could relive for a lifetime of weekends. We all went to a nine hole, par three golf course in Loveland. Paul golfed, Tim caddied, and Luke and I were cheerleaders. It's rekindled my desire to learn to play. Maybe Tim and I will take lessons together.


watching the action


smiles all around


putting


retrieving his ball


the ninth hole

No glorious weekend is truly glorious without a braai.


my mouth waters every time i see this photo


do i need to say anything?


raising tim properly (note lighter in his hand)


unlike tim, luke actually looks like he could become a rugby player


i'm not a white wine drinker, but the first days of spring make it so much better


luke agrees

The ultimate celebration of the return of warm weather has got to be a naked child in the back yard. We put a little water in Tim's old travel bath and he didn't take long to get into the spirit of things.


happy boy


naked boy


learning to wee standing up is much more fun than in the loo apparently


happy mom and naked boy

champagne pow pow

chilling in amy's flat

Mission Complete. I have made a convert of Paul. There's no business in snow business like Colorado business. I know. Everything about it is appealing... Okay, I'll stop being silly. However, Paul now will state to anyone who asks that the skiing conditions in the Rocky Mountains are beyond compare.


just to give you an idea of the kind of snow we're dealing with here

Thanks to my dear friend Amy, we spent a long weekend at her place in Steamboat Springs while she soaked up the sun in Mexico. She has a delicious two bed, two bath flat on the ski bus route. It's pretty kid friendly too. I love going there. She has the most amazing knives in her kitchen. I think I could cut my finger off and never feel it, they are that sharp. East Asian.

Paul worked on the Friday morning and we spent the afternoon making the drive. It's about three hours when the roads are perfect. The roads were not perfect, so we opted to take the longer route through Laramie, Wyoming. This meant we could avoid Cameron Pass. Unlike skiing in Breckenridge, Vail or Aspen, which are all accessed by I-70, Steamboat is a bit more difficult to reach. This makes it more precious because you don't run into a group of Texans in matching kit every time you get on the lift.

We left mild weather in Fort Collins and hit the snow and ice packed roads just north west of town when we left 287 for Highway 14, so we turned around and took 287 to Laramie and from there to Walden, the moose capital of the world. We didn't see any moose. From Walden, we just had one pass, Rabbit Ears, which was snow packed but almost no traffic, so it was slow, but easy driving.


can't say enough about how safe it feels to ride in this honda pilot


rabbit ears pass

the sun set just as we neared steamboat springs

The boys road for four hours with no more than a stop for me to wee and one to change Luke's nappy. That bodes well for our upcoming (in May) trip to California.

these guys know how to do a road trip

Paul skiied on the Saturday while the boys and I watched Amy's James Bond movie and Charlotte's Web along with climbing the 'mountains' in the neighborhood made from the snowplows. It was relatively warm but cold enough to make inside better than outside.


paul's self portrait, enjoying the slopes



to the top all by himself

We spent Sunday morning slowly packing and cleaning, then headed for home via Cameron Pass. The roads were clear and the sky blue, making a nice drive.


i spy with my little eye, something that begins with 's'. paul calls this the 'fargo' shot.

PS 'pow pow' is the local lingo for powder, the most desirable snow condition

rub a dub dub

milestones

We've hit two milestones on the same day: Timothy wore underwear yesterday with no accidents and Luke moved out of his crib and onto a mattress last night. He does not sleep well, and I've reached the point where I no longer recognize my sleep deprived self any more. We did this with Timothy and it worked, so it's worth a try with Luke. When he wakes for his nightly hour to two hour chat, I can stretch out on the bed with him and doze until he goes back to sleep. We've moved the mattress from the spare bed to his room. If this works, we'll get him a full sized bed of his own and return the queen mattress to its rightful place. If this doesn't work, you'll have to call Paul to find out what he's done because I'll have checked into a mental institute.

luke's temporary bed

tim's underwear peeking above his jeans

Although these milestones mean that the boys are growing up, we no longer have a baby in the house, they are exciting as well. I ran into an old friend today. She and I met in fourth grade and her husband and I met in Kindergarten. She told me that her son is going to graduate from college this spring. He's being checked out by two major baseball leagues! Her daughter starts college in the fall; she's going to a small school near Chicago on a soccer scholarship. She spoke of empty nest syndrome. That's a milestone that I can't even imagine right now. I wouldn't trade places for anything.

turn out the lights, the party is over

I'm a bit naive when it comes to the dark world of advertising and money making in general. After all, I'm a teacher, and teachers live in a sort of parallel universe where we work to prepare our students for the hard knocks of the work world but few of us have ever actually worked in it.

Google Ads has shut me down. In their recent email, they explain: "After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account."

It was stupid of me to thank you in my blog for clicking on ads,which is what I think they consider invalid activity. I just never really thought it through. In my mind, those advertisers were getting attention, end of story. Google doesn't see it that way, and now I understand. I mean even I know that 'there is no such thing as a free lunch.'

That's okay. I like systems that work. I like to know that corruption, even unintentional, is not allowed free reign. I thought some of the ads were good, attractions in Denver, coupons, travel: the kinds of things that I would have been tempted to click if I were clicking. Oh well.

So it's back to an ad-free blog. I'm a little wiser, a little poorer, and unharmed. Don't worry. Tim will still get to take his Amazing Athletes class and his swimming class.