Finals Finished!

This week Tyson finished all his finals (three 15 page papers) and he didn't even pull any all-nighters! I think that is a first! He also went to bed before midnight every night, wahoo!

So since he was done Friday at 6 pm we booked a baby-sitter for all three kids for all day Saturday (something we have never done before with a non-relative) and went skiing, just me and Tyson! This time we went to Copper Mountain, and it was a whole different league than Winter Park. Copper Mountain is HUGE and home for the US ski team. There was a competition going on when we went, and a huge halfpipe, etc. We looked at a map and picked a lift that had some "easy" trails going down. Yeah right.

I knew I was in trouble when the lift itself took 10-15 minutes to get to the top. . .and it was fairly fast moving. It took me an HOUR to get to the bottom of the mountain. It was so huge. Several times we passed people who were just sitting there, resting. I've never been on a mountain so big that people have to STOP and REST and different points to go down.  Although we did all green trails, they did NOT seem very "green" level to me. Super steep, super long, and, because of the sunny weather we've had the last week, super icy.

 It was good though. It pushed me to new levels of speed and skiing. If you count going with Jeffrey last week (when I went down one little bunny hill and spent the rest of the day helping/watching one of our kids), this was my fifth time skiing. I go about once every five years or so (age 13, 18, 24, 28). Tyson and I had a lot of fun and stayed until the end. The first lift we went on turned out to be the only lift open with green trails (besides one that you could go on halfway down the mountain) so we stuck to those the whole day. We went up the huge lift 3 times and the one halfway down once. I got faster--I think the last time we went down it took me only about 25 minutes instead of an hour.

It was fun to watch Tyson ski. He is SO good and just really graceful. I remember shortly after we got married I found out that he skis and we went about 4 weeks after we got married (that's the one time I went when I was 24). I was quite surprised when he was doing backflips and such skiing. He was nice and stuck with me all day yesterday instead of heading to the black diamonds, and didn't do any crazy tricks since the snow was so icy. I loved it being just the two of us.

Other new developments this week. . .our kids are now officially afraid of the dark. I'm not sure what brought this out, but they complain almost nightly they are scared of monsters, cheetahs, and I can't remember what else. I'm not sure if they are doing this just to try to avoid going to bed? But Jeffrey is getting harder and harder to put down. We now put on classical music every night, frequently remind them that angels are watching over them, and have occasionally turned on their light very dim (thank goodness for the dimmer in there) and left it on all night. I think someone is going to get a night-light for Christmas.

Any other exciting-ness that happened is just going to have to wait for later. We are leaving on Tuesday for a full MONTH (hopefully nothing happens to our house. . .like it burning down or the pipes freezing, etc.) and traveling to Utah, Idaho, California, Mexico, and Arizona before we head back up to Utah and Colorado. Yesterday as we were driving home from our ski adventure Tyson suggested that we also hit Oklahoma on the way back up from Mexico. NO WAY. We are already going to be spending way to many hours in the car with our three kids. Maybe we should get a portable DVD player for them? But then I think of how well they already do in the car. Well, hopefully more updates will come along the way ;)