Ribbons and Bows...and little boy stuff too!: January 2012

It was finally time….time for a trip that David and I have been waiting on for several years now. This winter it was finally time for Allie to take her first ski trip! I think David and I were more excited than she was! Even before we had kids, David and I talked about how much fun it would be to watch our kids learn to ski….the trip definitely lived up to all of our much-awaited expectations.

A week after Christmas we packed up all of Allie’s new ski gear that Santa brought her and headed out to Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Now, everyone knows that the first thing you (or at least we) have to do as we are pulling in to Steamboat is to stop for some great Mexican food. And who can resist a great margarita....or a glass of cold milk! Cheers, Daddy!

Before we could get to the super fun stuff, we had to get Allie fitted for her skis and ski boots! These are the tiniest, cutest skis and ski boots I've ever seen!

We had so many fun things planned, and we managed to cram them all in to 3 days!

We started with a gondola ride to the top of the mountain for a barbeque dinner our first night.

Allie had a fun time playing new games at the dinner, like learning to balance a spoon on her nose….she was quite good at this immediately….much better than David! And of course, she topped this great dinner off with some yummy red velvet cake…her new favorite.

The next day would be Allie’s first of 3 days of ski school. She was SO excited and ready to go….she was getting frustrated with me for taking too long to get all of her stuff ready and she just kept saying “Can I go now? Can I go now?”. She did wonderful!

Enjoy this video of Allie's first day on skis!

We didn’t have any big plans for this night….except watching BAMA beat up on LSU in the National Championship Game! Roll Tide!

Day 2 of ski school went off without a hitch and Allie continued to do great.

Here's a video of day #2!

That night was a super exciting sleigh ride on a real working ranch. Allie’s still talking about these two amazingly super strong horses, Fred and Barney, that pulled our giant sleigh full of people. We had a great dinner at the ranch house and Allie and her Daddy spent a bit of time dancing together at the dinner.

Day 3 of ski school was just as productive, and we even signed Allie up for a private ski lesson. She was doing fantastic, but unfortunately got sick during her private lesson and had to cut it a bit short. We spent the afternoon resting and then got ready for a big night of tubing!

Video of day #3!

As it turns out, the tubing is quite fast, and Allie only went down the hill one time….she enjoyed much more watching David and I take turns riding the tubes down the hill. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get any pictures of this adventure. David and I are both sure that Will is gonna LOVE this activity during his first ski trip next winter! He’s our fearless little dare devil…..

This trip was all that we hoped it would be. Allie did great skiing and we’re certain she’s gonna be a natural. No doubt she’ll be racing us down the mountain next year. But more than anything, Allie, David, and I just can’t wait until Will can join us on our family ski trip next year!

Love to all,

Nikki

What a fabulous Christmas!

We started the holiday season in Pennsylvania with a couple of fun presents from Mommy and Daddy!

Will absolutely loves his truck and you can often find him just sitting in it to read a book or watch a TV show, and Allie just can’t stop jumping on her new trampoline!

Mommy and Daddy got a few great presents of our own, and yes, we definitely had some help opening them!

A couple of days later, we made our way down to Atlanta where the real celebrations began!

The kids got to open some great presents from Granny, Honey, Chris, Grandma, and PawPaw, and then it was time to get ready for Santa!

We baked cookies for Santa and put out lots of yummy food for the reindeer, and then it was off to bed because we knew it would be an early morning!

Santa did a great job bringing so many fun things for the kids! (I think he brought everything on Allie’s list except for a hoola hoop and a red yo-yo with a yellow star on it!).