Colorado Ski Trip February 2011

Krzysztof and I took a ski trip to Colorado in February. Because of being pregnant 2 years ago and nursing last year, it had been 3 years since I had been on the slopes, so I was really looking forward to this trip! And this was the first time KZ and I had planned to go away together without Brandon for more than one night his whole life! And we were going to 2 of our favorite places: Vail, where we got engaged 7 years ago and Copper Mountain, where we had an amazing trip together several years ago. We were so excited about this trip.

All in all, it was fairly good...not amazing as we expected as I'll explain later.

First of all, we left Brandon with KZ's parents at our house. There is a blog post about that prior to this one, or you can go to it here. Actually, this is one of 4 blog postings that I've done today (I know...I'm a slacker for waiting so long to do these!), so if you are interested, you might want to check those out too.

So we left on Wednesday late morning for our drive to Colorado. After driving 5 minutes, KZ's parents called us to let us know one of our cell phones was on the kitchen table. Better to know 5 minutes in to the trip than 5 hours! Once back on the road we had a minor car issue that led us to stop after only an hour drive in Topeka, KS at a Ford dealer for them to check it out. Luckily it was a quick fix, and we were on our way, only to realize once on the interstate that the hood was not closed all the way.

Maybe we should have taken some hints from that first hour of our trip that the rest of it was not going to be smooth sailing.

The drive actually took us less time than we expected. We had planned to stop in Denver for the night but decided to cancel our hotel reservation and continue on to the mountains. We drove to Dillon, CO and ate at the Dillon Dam Brewery which we've both been to separately before. It was great to finally be there, but it was COLD! The temperature was 12 BELOW zero when we got to the restaurant. We stayed at a hotel in Frisco.

Thursday we skiied at Vail, and the coldness continued. I didn't even ski much in the morning because it was so cold, and I felt very very rusty in my skills. The afternoon was a little warmer, and we were able to get some pictures where we got engaged.

Here's where it all happened! At the top of the Mountain Top Express right here by this tree.

And here's a picture from the actual event 7 years ago! This was not staged. We were on the trip with a couple of my girlfriends from grad school, and they got to be photographer and videographer during the proposal! Notice we haven't changed our clothes for 7 years...we do both have newer skis, and we wear helmets now, though.

Thursday evening we drove over to Copper Mountain where we stayed for the next 3 nights. We stayed right in the village, which was so great and convenient. Many of the units there have kitchens, but we opted to just get a regular room so we wouldn't feel obligated to do grocery shopping and cooking.

Our room was really cute.

This is the view out of the main window. This is Central Village. The lift is just beyond the left border of this picture.

In the above picture of our room, this is the window above the couch. It was great to be able to lay on the bed and look at the slopes, which I ended up doing more often that I wanted to.

We had a good day skiing on Friday. I was feeling much more confident by the end of the day and excited to have 2 more days to ski.

Friday afternoon we celebrated Apres Ski at JJ's, one of our favorite places at Copper that has live entertainment.

That's all the pictures we have together. I was really sick by the following morning and spent the next 2 days in bed most of the time. It was a combination of a sinus infection, bronchitis, and altitude sickness. Ugh! The funny thing is, I got this on the trip when we got engaged! I guess this island girl can't take the altitude!

It was great to get away, but we wished we would have been able to have more fun skiing and hanging out together as I was not the most fun person to be around those last 2 days!

Survival of the Grandparents

While Krzysztof and I went to Colorado for a ski trip in February, Krzysztof's parents graciously came to our house to watch Brandon. This was the first time that BOTH of us were away from Brandon for this long. We were gone for 5 days. And this was the first time that Brandon's Dziadzia and Babcia had ever been with him for that long without one of us around! Here's a few things they did:

KZ's Uncle Martin came in for a 2 day visit from Boulder while we were gone. The 3 of them took Brandon to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Here's Brandon and his Dziadzia.

And Brandon with his Babcia.

Having a snack at the museum. That's Brandon's great uncle Martin.

They also took Brandon to this mall we have near us that has quite a few of those ride on cars. Fortunately for all of us Brandon doesn't know that they move, and he's quite content to just sit in them.

I love this picture. But I hope I never see Brandon looking at me through the windshield of a real red convertible unless he's sitting in the passenger seat and the convertible belongs to me.

Reading books with uncle Martin.
Brandon will sit with you for hours if you'll keep reading to him. This just blessed the hearts of his grandparents, who are both librarians! Brandon, however, gets obsessed with certain books. We call them "books of the week" because he rotates which ones he's obsessed with each week. He wants the same 1 or 2 books read to him over and over and over and over and OVER again! I think the librarians even tired of it after a day or so!

When we called to check in one of the days we were gone, Brandon's Babcia asked us, "Does Brandon usually push his chairs into the kitchen so he can read books in there?" Ummm....no. I'm glad they took a picture. What a silly little guy.

That wasn't the only thing out of the ordinary that Brandon did...

His Dziadzia told us straight out that he planned to spoil Brandon while we were gone. We didn't mind. That's what grandparents are for, right? But Brandon really took advantage of them.

While he is very mischievous when we are home, there are certain things Brandon knows he is not supposed to touch. The big ones are the trash can, the stereo, and the blinds. When we got home we found all of the knobs off of our stereo. We asked KZ's parents what happened to the knobs! They were like, "Oh, Brandon kept taking them off and playing with them so we just took them all off and put them up there on the mantle." We honestly had no idea the knobs even came off! So obviously Brandon got in lots of time pushing stereo buttons to make up for all the days he's missed out on it while we are home.

And we were horrified to find out that he constantly tried to play in the trash can! He reportedly especially loved to take out the empty cereal and cracker boxes to add to his toy collection. He must have been in that trash can a lot because KZ's uncle said he was like "a little raccoon!"

These last few pictures are from the Kidscape exibit at the Johnson County Museum. This is such a great place to take kids.

Our little farmer.

Brandon loves hats! Apparently one fireman's hat wasn't enough for him. Don't you want to give this little firefighter a kiss on those puckered lips!

Brandon says, "Don't worry sir, I'll fix your leg right up...and I'll try to put all your organs back in their right places too."

All in all Brandon's days with his grandparents seemed to go really well. Brandon was happy most of the time, and KZ's parents told us they would love to do it again. I don't think they have to worry about not getting that opportunity again sometime soon! We missed our little man, but it was nice to get away knowing he was in trusted, capable hands!

Random Winter PIctures

Here are some random pictures from January and February at the Z house:

This was the end result of Brandon eating a bowl of oatmeal all by himself for the first time. I was actually pretty surprised that it wasn't any worse than this. He's even better at it now. If we could only get him to eat something other than oatmeal and his other 10 or so "Brandon approved" foods...

Here's Brandon with Krzysztof's friend Andy who travels from Michigan to Kansas City for work frequently. Brandon really likes Andy (who he calls "Ah-mi").


There is a famous restaurant in Kansas City called Fritz's Railroad Restaurant. It is basically just a burger and fries joint, but they have a pretty unique way for you to order and receive your food. Each booth has a telephone in it, and you order your food through that telephone. There is a little train that frequently travels around the restaurant on a track close to the ceiling, and that train brings you your food. Somehow the train is programed to drop off your tray of food onto this elevator thing high above your table. Then the elevator lowers down so you can take off your tray. The funny thing is that the train drops that tray off so quickly that it looks dangerously close to sliding right off onto you or your dining partner.

We went to Fritz's with Brent (a guy KZ works with), his wife Kathy, and their son Mitchell who is a little younger than Brandon. I had a 2 cars in my purse that I pulled out for the boys to play with. Brandon wasn't too happy about sharing.

They give all the kids (and boy do they have a lot of kids in this restaurant!) a conductor hat. Brandon loves to wear hats. He's feeling mighty studly right now.

Here's the elevator bringing our tray down. The food is definitely nothing spectacular, but I would definitely go to Fritz's again if for no other reason than it would allow KZ and I to have a conversation because Brandon was constantly entertaining by the passing train.


These next few pictures are from a snow storm we had several weeks ago. We got quite a bit of snow, but the crazy thing about this storm was the wind! It blew the snow into some really neat formations - almost like desert sand.

Preventing Cabin Fever

Winter can get kind of long here in Kansas (but not as long as in Michigan...), and it seems even longer when you have a toddler hanging on your leg and whining because he's bored. You can't play outside, and sometimes it's just too cold or potentially hazardous to leave the house.

The only good part about winters like this is it forces me as a mom to come up with creative things to entertain Brandon at home. He gets so tired of his toys and books on long days at home, even with my toy rotation!

The following are some pictures from January with some activities we did to help prevent cabin fever!

I wish I could say I did fun, creative activities with Brandon everyday. It really should be my goal to do one novel, creative activity with him each day, but I honestly don't put the mental thought and energy into that as often as I should.

And most of these activities are just silly ones with materials I have around here, so don't be expecting some revolutionary ideas, fellow moms! Here they are:

Digging for toys in the "rice and bean" bucket.

First attempt at an obstacle course. Brandon didn't quite get the point, but he had fun climbing around on things.

What do you do if you don't have a basketball hoop? Make one out of your Costco sized dishwasher detergent canister! Slam dunk!

Brandon's Mimi and Papa got him this awesome easel for Christmas. He loves it! He loves to watch us draw pictures, and he'll tell us what the pictures are. I'm sure you are all envious of my amazing artistic talent to draw a car and a train, right? He likes to scribble with the crayons, but on this particular day, he was way more interested in dropping the crayons through the paint cup hole. And why wouldn't he be?

We use the chalk side of the easel the most often. Check out that tripod grip! This handwriting specialist is very proud. No, 18 month-olds are not supposed to be able to hold crayons and chalk with a tripod grip....but they will if you only give them a tiny broken piece of crayon or chalk. It's the only way to hold something that small. Break your crayons and chalk moms! I know it's hard to damage a perfectly good crayon, but you'll be so glad you did when your child starts writing!

He definitely likes to erase too!

This was NOT part of my winter indoor fun...well not for me anyway. I found him like this after leaving the room for just a second.

Putting stickers on a toilet paper roll. Brandon hasn't had much exposure to stickers yet, and he was both amused and concerned about how they stuck to his fingers.

And finally, what is indoor play without an empty box?

We have seen a few glimpses of spring around here in the past couple weeks, and we cannot wait until we can get outside and play every day!