Spring Break/ March 10 on 10.

This year for Spring Break we decided to go skiing and give Emery her first turn on the snow.  We decided to drive and settled on Taos, New Mexico since it was relatively close and would take us past Midland, TX on the way there.  Since March's 10 on 10 fell on our second driving day of our ski trip, I'll also include that in this post.  

The Bowling Crew

Since we have been married, we hadn't managed to get out to Midland to visit Bob and Kathy.  Bob, who is definitely all about the babies, also agreed to watch Eleanor for us while we took the big kids to New Mexico and while Kathy was working.  Very brave of him, wasn't it?

These two are definitely buddies now.  We got to hang out, visit with the rest of the family, and finally see the house that we've been talking about with Bob and Katy for years. After a night and a full day, we took off.

10 on 10:

 

Bob was amazed at how much Nell eats.

  

Bye!

 

The road goes on forever (and the party never ends).

UFO stuff in Roswell.

Roswell also had a Sonic.

The adults were entertained by Overdrive audiobooks from the library.  Great book, by the way.

Road trips are all about treats.

Picking up skis.

And then we arrived at our little house.

The kids were ectastic about the loft, Emery especially, because it was just her size.

The house came with quite a view.

Then there were shots of the actual ski trip:

Dropping the kids off at ski school first thing in the morning.

  They loved this little bridge.

Alastair did ski school for two days and Emery for three.  

That left time for Mom and Dad ski dates.  We skied hard, lingered a bit over lunch, and hit the slopes again until it was time to pick up the kids.

Then we did a little skiing with the kids in the school area.  

The first day Emery kept giggling and throwing herself on the ground to do snow angels.  She refused to believe that fresh powder was required.

Alastair came out with us on the third day of skiing and didn't slow us down in the slightest.  

It was awesome to see his enthusiasm and bravery while skiing.  That was quite a change from a certain meltdown that occurred on Copper Mountain in Colorado.

Alastair, pretending to be an only child again.

Taos is a fun mountain, but it took a decidedly relaxed approach to children's ski lesson.  I want the kids to have fun while they learn, but the point of lessons from our perspective is to get the kids safe and out on the mountain.  I got the impression that most of the adults at Taos viewed ski school as babysitting so they didn't have to ski with their kids.  I loved our ski dates but I also loved skiing with the kids; that's why we brought them.  We want our kids to love doing the things we love doing so that we can continue to enjoy the outdoors throughout their lives. Keystone had a much better ski school in my opinion.

By the end of her third full day in ski school, they had not yet taught Emery how to stop on her own and were just starting to work on gliding down a marginally sloped area.  As we did not plan to actually move to Taos, we pulled her to get her a little actual slope time.

She loved it!  I brought the little harness I bought for Alastair and we found some nice gentle long runs at the end of that last day to let her really try out some skiing.  It was a little stressful getting all the way over to that area, but once we got underway she was able to relax and enjoy herself, singing at the top of her lungs.

Two ace skiers out in the snow.

Afterward, Kim took us out to see the Rio Grande Gorge.  I thought he was nuts because as we drove in that direction, I couldn't see anything.  

Then we drove over this bridge and looked down.  

Way way way down (565 feet).

It was pretty cool.

Then it was time to go home.  We took this picture on the morning we headed back to Midland, a foggy morning that turned into snow as we drove through the mountains.

After lots more driving...

We made it back to our Nell Belle.  Here is the happy crew... right before the stomach bug hit.  We made it about an hour and a half outside of Midland when Nell started getting sick.

After a very long (and smelly) drive back to Houston, during which we changed Nelly's clothes several times, stripped the carseat and improvised a new cover for it, and hit the shops for more wet wipes, we made it home.  Only to have it hit the big kids by midnight, the grandparents back in Midland about the same time, and me by morning.  Ouch.  It was an awesome trip with a smash-bang ending.  I think Bob and Kathy might be "out of town" if we decide to come through again next year!