Deer Valley

Way back in the summer, when I was still living in California and Joe had already moved to Utah, he called to ask me if I wanted to go on a trip with his brother's family to Deer Valley.  When he told me the price, I thought it was a little steep and then said, "Maybe we'll do it as a Christmas gift, I'll think about it."  He misunderstood me and committed to the trip.  I was in the thick of it in terms of the move and taking care of the kids alone, so maybe it sounded a little different when I said it.  Anyway, writing the check for the trip this summer was a "what are we doing?" moment,  but now that it's all said and done, we're glad we did it.  It was a great time.  I LOVED Deer Valley.  It's a fabulous ski resort and I couldn't believe how many runs were open, even with our lack of snow this year.  Thank heaven for snow-making machines!

We thought about leaving Aaron and Isaac with my parents, but they were so excited to go to the "cabin" that we couldn't resist taking them along.  We had them in the ski school day-care during the day and then they were able to be with us in the evening.  We enrolled Brynn and Abby in all day ski school and so Joseph and I had 2 full days of ski dates.  It was lots of fun.  Joe has always snowboarded and I haven't skied for about 13 years.  I've snowboarded once during that time, but even that was 12 years ago.  I loved being with him on the slopes and chatting on the lift on the way up.  I also spent some time skiing with my sister-in-law and alone.  It was great to take a slower pace on my own and tackle some of the intermediate runs without worrying about being too slow.  We stayed from Thursday until Monday, but only skied on Friday and Saturday.  Aaron and Isaac started to get sick, and we didn't want them to spend another day in day care.  We bought 5 day passes, so we have 3 more passes to use this season.  We're really excited.

The girls loved their lessons and made some great progress.  We'll probably try to get Aaron skiing this winter too.

On Sunday, Joe and I took our family to the Family Tree Visitor Center, run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We then went to the visitors church meeting.  The directors of the visitor center spoke about the history of the center and it's purpose.  It was really interesting.