Steamboat

Part of my semi-long hiatus in posts was a very long vacation! Wonderful! We haven't taken a decent vacation since Caroline was about 6 months old and Joe and I camped and duck hunted. By decent I mean going anywhere a) without the kids, or b) somewhere besides Craig of Grand Junction to visit family, so this was double-decent - we left 3 of our kids in Craig and Joe and I went to Steamboat Springs for 3 days/2 nights!  Rented a nice little condo with a kitchen, cooked most of our meals in (though we did go out to a nice dinner one night), walked around the town during the day and rented movies at night. SO exciting, I know, but it WAS exciting to not have kids interrupting the movie for their favorite stuffed animal, a glass of water, or a bad dream.  While we were there it snowed like MAD, 41" in 72 hours, but it was beautiful and certainly didn't dampen our good time!

 It did seem a bit of a pity to be in Steamboat during such amazing snow and NOT SKI (or snowboard), but we had Ethan, so we think maybe we'll try the trip again next year, leave 3 kids in Craig, and take Patrick with us instead of Ethan so he can get some ski lessons.