Oh, how I love spontaneous vacations...!

Being new in the ER, I am unable to pick up extra shifts so I am back to 12 hours, 3 days a week...which is very exhausting but also pretty great because that means I get 4 days off every week! It just so happened that a couple weeks ago I had a gap in my schedule... 6 days off! How wonderful!! So I decided to make sure that my husband also got 6 days off...then planned, what I like to think of as our first annual, SKI TRIP!!

This was Jon's first time downhill skiing and my third (?)... so being the very inexperienced skiers we are, we of course decided to tackle the sport head on and go to the biggest ski mountains in Colorado (go big or go home, right???!!)... ASPEN here we come!!!!

Thanks to hotwire (which I would highly recommend), we got a great hotel deal, thanks to Frontier Airlines we got some cheap plane tickets, and thanks to our waiter at breakfast the morning we flew in we found a great ski rental place!!

As a re-cap; I must say that this was one of our more successful vacations...nothing stolen, lost, crashed, etc... (we have a bad record of disaster vacations including our honeymoon...which was absolutely amazing regardless of the mishaps...) Here are some highlights:

•  Got to see a good friend who lives in Colorado Springs!! She drove all the way to Denver so we could have breakfast and catch up! Miss this girl!

• Jon insisted on making me ride up the ski lift to "Panda Peak" where 3-5 yr olds try out the slopes THREE times before going up the mountains..
• Not long after Panda Peak, Jon decided he was ready for some jumps and "accidentally" led me down a BLACK DIAMOND!!
• On our first day..65 degrees and sunny, so I decided to bypass the free sunscreen they were giving out (I rarely pass on free stuff, but it was SPF 70...!!)
• Second day...we are both burnt  to the crisp, and I totally paid for not accepting the free sunscreen...with a SWOLLEN FACE!! How embarrassing!!

• Snowstorm and blizzard keeps MOST of the skiers off the lifts...which was awfully nice except for the fact that the ski lifts all shut down due to lightning...they told us that NEVER happens, we just looked at each other and shrug...OF COURSE it happens when we are here...!

• Day three...my face= MORE SWOLLEN!! I am about to cry because never in my sunburn experience have I dealt with this type of reaction...finally I had to give in and take some Benadryl...!

• On a more pleasant note...I must add that after everyday of skiing we relaxed in the resort mountainside hot tub...!

• We left thankful for having been surrounded by the Rockies 5 awesome days...those beautiful mountains are a BIG, POWERFUL witness to how MIGHTY our God is and how completely creative and beautiful He is!!  

And to sum it all up...I learned some very valuable lessons: 1. ALWAYS use sunscreen!! (I have denied this truth for years...finally learned my lesson.) 2. If you have time off, treat yourself to a vacation...!!  3. Marry someone who will love you even if your face looks like a balloon <3