Colorado Vacation

Last week we went on a family vacation to Colorado. This was Luke’s first plane ride and it went very well considering he had a cold and cough.

We spent 2 days with our friends Julie and Derek (from UW-Madison) at their home in Longmont, Colorado. Their son, Daniel is about 9 weeks older than Luke. It was fun to spend time with them and share stories about each of our kids, especially since we are going through this time of life together. Daniel was crawling around and eating a lot more solid foods than Luke so it gave us a preview of what Luke will be doing soon (update: Luke ate half a container of carrots plus a cereal for lunch today).

Luke was not his normal self the first 2 days because he was sick and not used to his new environment. Julie and Derek also gave us some advice on altitude and dehydration. After taking that advice and using a humidifier Luke was back to his normal self.

So our time at Vail was very fun. We went on shorter hikes at least a few times each day. I got to go mountain biking down Vail pass, which was a 15 mile descent. Alyssa went mountain biking on Vail mountain, which meant she went straight up. And Luke hung out in Vail village charming everyone.

Our next stop was Snowmass, which is near Aspen. We did a 3 hour hike with Luke by Crater Lake in the Maroon Bells. The Aspen trees were bright orange and yellow and contrasted with the dark green of the evergreen trees. Everyone on the trail was impressed with Luke and one older lady (about 75) said one day he would be a mountaineer.

The last day and a half of our trip it turned cold and snowed. We had about 10 inches at our condo which was at 8600 feet elevation. So we built Luke his first snowman.

We are thankful for a fun trip and the opportunity to give Luke so many good experiences.