Isaac and Caitlin's Blog: More Winter Park!

I can't believe how quickly the season went by, but we just packed up the Winter Park house having survived our first full ski season! I'm still amazed at the progress that the kids made in just a few short months. Isaac will tell you that he can ski black diamonds (more accurately, he can get down the blacks), but in reality he is really good at the blues and getting better at the blue-blacks. Caitlin - had a minor crisis of confidence on a too-steep blue-black that took me almost an hour to get her down (honestly one of the most challenging moments of parent-hood to try to stay positive and encouraging that whole time, not sure I was entirely successful...). That run required a few weeks of green-only runs before she regained her mojo agreed to ski the blues again. During those few weeks, Isaac and Bill went their own way exploring the trees, bumps and jumps on the harder runs, while Caitlin and I perfected our form on the greens and built her confidence back up. It seemed to help when I told her that we could use "girl-power" to get down :) I have to say, I was hesitant to agree to so many weekends of travel and skiing, but it was an amazing winter and I wouldn't have traded it for anything!
Below are some pics from the last few weeks of skiing in Winter Park:
First - Karen and I had a really fun morning all to ourselves on a day with several inches of snow where we made our own tracks on every run. Bonding time with the Kruses was a definite highlight of the rental house.

Here are some pics of the Kruse and Anderson kids -- playing outside in the snow at the house and skiing together. The kids did some great bonding over the winter too!

We met up with Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Evan on many of our days on the mountain which made it extra fun. Here's Cate and Adrienne and some pics of the whole crew skiing together.

Evan coaching Cate

Evan shaking Isaac down for lunch money ;)

Some pics from two really fun weekends in WP with the Schrutts. One was all of us together, the second was just the dads and kids (Jen, Alli, and I were in Vail for a sisters' weekend). On the second weekend, Bill left mid-day with Cate and Ari and Isaac hung on the blacks for the rest of the day with Max, Jaden and Talia - they said he kept up and did great!

cousins dogpile!

We spent 4 days in Winter Park for the kids' Spring Break and Bill's birthday and brought Mayensi so she could learn to snowboard - she did great!

Mayensi and Cate skiing/snowboarding

bill opening his cards at the fancy Mexican restaurant in WP

Finally, for our last weekend, Aunt Rachael came up (for her second weekend). I was hoping for a bluebird spring day for our last day, and while it wasn't total blue skies, it was warm enough to ski with no jackets for part of it and it was my favorite day of the whole season! Rach and I skied with Cate on the greens at first while we got her psyched for the harder runs, and she did a great job. Because it had been so warm, the runs were a little icy which actually made them more fun for Rach and I, and Cate still did great. We met up with Bill and Isaac for some blues and the warmth melted the ice to make the conditions perfect for the remainder of the day. Isaac (un?)intentionally led us down a blue-black for the last run, but Cate was a trooper and powered through it, making it down with almost no tears. When asked how she did it she said - "I used girl power" :)