Christmas Vacation: Mountains, Snow, Skiing, & Family

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter break!  I don’t know about y’all, but I would be totally lost without these 2 weeks off!  It’s such a fantastic time to recharge and hit the road hard in January with a refreshed mindset.

That, and it’s the perfect time to travel!

Speaking of travel, I wanted to share a bit of our vacation to Breckenridge and Denver last week.  When we took our trip to Mexico this summer I felt like I took literally NO pictures, so I made sure to take plenty this round!

For some reason we chose to leave on Friday evening, just a few hours after school got out…  That led to inherent CRAZINESS with trying to get home, packed (because I always do it last minute), and to the airport.  This is our 2 suitcases, backpack, and tote bag BEFORE we called a friend to borrow  another suitcase to separate some of the stuff from the large suitcase.  No one needs to pay heavy bag fees…

Unfortunately the craziness didn’t end with packing…  Our flight was delayed (many, many times) totaling 3 hours.  The flight before us that was also headed to Denver was also delayed 3 hours – so we thought maybe we could get on standby for the earlier flight.  We waited, and waited, and actually made it onto the earlier flight!

Our happy dance onto the airplane was short lived, though.  We got on to find that the 2 seats we were given were already occupied.  Come to find out the scanner had not read the 2 tickets for those passengers making them think they actually had open seats.  So we un-happily danced right back off the plane.

Due to the delay we were going to also miss our shuttle from Denver to Breckenridge, and of course they couldn’t get us on another shuttle until mid-day the following day.  Missing a day of skiing was NOT in our cards, so we were fortunately able to cancel the shuttle and rent a car.

Once all of this mess was out of the way it was time for our fantastic trip!

While we were in Breckenridge there was a winter storm for about a day and a half which totaled 24 inches of snow!  You may say UGH, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the snow and it made for some awesome skiing!

To assist in keeping somewhat warm, we may have stopped once several times on the slopes throughout the trip for hot chocolate with a “spirited” peppermint addition!  YUM!

This may have also given me the extra little courage to go down my first black diamond runs!  For those who don’t know, a “green” is beginner, a “blue” is intermediate, and a “black” is advanced.  This was only my second time skiing, but I was determined to go down a black and not totally wipe out!

By the 3rd day we were only doing black diamond runs.  It was a GREAT workout and super fun!  Certainly helped to solidify my desire to move to the mountains!  

Anyway, that’s about it for the ski portion of the trip (minus the great food – but somehow I didn’t manage to get any pictures of it), so here’s some random scenery pics as we headed down the mountain to Denver!

The view while driving is just breathtaking!

Once we got to Denver we spent time with the mister’s parents and family.  They are super fun to be around!  (Again, I ended up not getting a ton of pictures while in Denver…)  However, I did manage to snag this lovely photo.

If you can’t tell, that is a blanket wrapped around a tree!  I guess it was cold?  Completely random, I know, but I couldn’t resist getting photo evidence of this!

My favorite picture of the trip happened on our second to last day on the trip.  We went with Dustin’s uncle, aunt, and cousins to a small mountain town to have lunch and take a train ride through the mountains.

It’s pretty awesome – even with Dustin’s uncle photobombing!

Well I think that’s about it for this trip.  I’m feeling like I did a much better job snagging pictures this go round.

Only a few days of winter break left, and I plan on being super lazy!

AND, I almost forgot!  I am throwing a sale in my [TpT store] from today until January 1st!  You can head over and get a 15% discount off of everything!  You can visit my store by clicking [HERE].