So Proud

We've had a fairly eventful January, but we won't go into the details--lots going on in the McGuirk Family right now, but we don't want to jinx things by celebrating too early.  Hopefully in February we will be able to post about some of the pending developments.  For now, we haven't been doing too much around the house.  A lot of naps fill our weekends.

Evidently Joey and Harley seem to think they own the place and can sleep on whatever bed they want. Sadly, we let them get away with this, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

Bode has had an up-and-down month.  Per previous posts, he spent some quality time in ski school.  I failed to mention one particular episode that happened after ski school.  We were walking back to our condo, and we passed a family.  One little girl about Bode's age was bawling tears.  She was tired and didn't want to carry her skis.  Bode heard this, went up to the girl, and carried her skis all the way back to our condo (this family was staying in the same building we were).  Ashley and I were very proud of our little man--so thoughtful and considerate.  Yes, so proud...until one day this week when we received the following from the school:

Certainly not something we liked reading.   We had a good talk with Bode.  Fortunately, the phrase, "We are very disappointed in you" affects him (either that or he's a good actor).  Bode wrote a letter of apology, and he's behaved since this incident.  Here's hoping he stays out of "consequence alley."

Finally, we are back to being proud because Bode learned a new trick:

Yes, the infamous arm-pit fart.  We are just tickled to death when we see Bode standing in line with his schoolmates, all of them laughing because Bode's doing this wonderful noise-maker.  We had to explain this talent is either 1) done at home or 2) on the playground at school.  He is to NEVER do this in the classroom.  We've yet to receive a second letter from the school; we will see what happens.

Super Bowl is tomorrow.  We don't like neither of the teams.  If only both could lose :-)  Pleasant week to all.

Ski Weekend

This past weekend was a three-day weekend for Bode and me (MLK holiday).  We convinced Ashley to take today off and headed up to Breckenridge for some ski-fun.  We headed up Friday night after work.  We packed a pizza and snacks, so we could check in, get to our place, and then relax as a family, not to mention rest up for some skiing.  Saturday, we woke up and took Bode to ski-school.  He really seems to like it; I'd like never having to wait in line at the lifts too, one of the perks of ski school.   Bode got a pretty crazy helmet hat for Christmas; he looks way cool.

After dropping Bode off, Ashley and I broke the ski-school rules and went to Arapahoe Basin.  I think you're supposed to stay in Breckenridge, but it's not like we went to Vail or anything crazy.  We kept a close watch on our phone just in case there was an emergency call.  Fortunately there wasn't one...and even if there had been one, we could easily claim not to have heard the phone, poor reception, etc. :-)  But back to the mountain.  A-basin had received three or four inches of snow the night before, so we had a great time.  Here's a shot of one of the runs where you can still see the powder.

Here are a couple random shots of Ashley.

We skied until just after noon.  We then headed back to Breck, had some lunch, and toured around Blue River looking at different houses.  We picked Bode up at 3:30.  Ashley got this picture of him at the end of the day.

He's real easy to pick out in that hat.  Thanks to the RF-ID tag on Bode's pass, we are able to track his movements.  He skied 8,216 vertical feet on Saturday, which is pretty impressive (stats unavailable for Ashley and me; evidently A-basin is still in the 20th century).

Because we had such a good time on Saturday, we got up and did it all over again on Sunday.  At first, we were worried, because it was extremely windy in the morning.  Fortunately, the temperature was 30 or so; had it been in the teens, it would have been one short ski-day.  We skied for two hours, and then we stopped for some tea.  We were thinking of packing it in--a little crowded for our tastes.  We went outside and grabbed a photographer for our obligatory Epic picture.

We then decided to try a different part of the mountain, which was a good idea.  We skied for another couple hours, and had some great runs.  We did 11,353 vertical feet and enjoyed every foot of it.  Funny that Ashley's pass only recorded 4,000 or so feet even though we skied together all day.  The highlight had to be the end of the day when we went to get Bode.  He did another 7,572 vertical feet, bringing his season total to 29, 692 feet, higher than Mount Everest.  We got this video on his final run--he's even using polls now!  Sorry about the audio (damn that wind).

Sunday night was relaxing--just the three of us watching TV.

We came home today and did chores.  Joey and Harley were thrilled when we got home, but Joey had a little melt down while we were away, destroying his pillow and two other pillows.  We need a Joey cam--maybe fit a camera on Harley so we could see what Joey's up to.  Oh well, other than that, it was a fantastic weekend, and we can't wait for the next ski trip.  Pleasant week to all.