Christmas 2006, Part 4

December 26 was Mom and Dad's anniversary - Happy Anniversary! We lay pretty low that day, but headed to Steamboat Springs proper for dinner that evening. In honor of the occasion, Mom and Dad bought pizza dinner (how appropriate?). Then we wandered around town and shopped for while. Zach's favorite part of the evening was when he found a big shovel he could play with!

That night, we watched another movie, and prepped our breakfast for the next day.

On December 27, Chris, Scott and I decided to head out and go snowshoeing again. We headed to the same area from which we headed to find our tree - only this time we went up the other side of the road. It was so pretty! We stuck our poles in a couple times, and the snow must have been 4-5 feet deep...but with the snowshoes on, we sunk only about a foot-and-a-half to two feet. Depending on the areas, it was pretty tough going. The uphill parts were pretty difficult! Given the fact that we (I) probably aren't in the best of shape, and the thin air at that altitude, my heart was beating pretty hard!! Luckily we dressed in mutliple layers, b/c depending on whether we were on an uphill climb or a downhill jaunt, in the sun or in the shade, we went from fully bundled to peeling back to just a longsleeved shirt and vest!

We followed the path for a while, and then, with Scott as our guide, we broke trail and blazed our own through the trees. This downhill section was both fun and frightening at the same time. The only real way to do it was to kind of run down the hill - and hope that your feet didn't get caught up and leave you making a face plant into the deep snow. Getting up after falling was a chore in that deep snow!!

Four miles and two and a half hours later, we returned, exhuasted, to the car. I think Scott could have gone another few hours, but Chris and I were pretty pooped. But it was SO FUN!

December 28 was leaving day. This one was an adventure and of itself. We woke up early, ate, packed the cars, and headed out on our way by 9 am. About 2 1/2 hours into our 3+ hour drive back to Denver, we hit a snowstorm. And that's when our progress stopped...the roads got worse and worse, and we were just barely inching along. We passed multiple accidents, and the DOT closed the westbound lanes of the freeway we were on (they also closed the eastbound, but luckily we made it through before they did that!). We arrived at Kjirsen and Scott's house at about 3-ish? and then decided that we'd better head to the airport immediately for our 6:50 flight to MN. Frontier had canceled almost all of their flights, but Sun Country still had all flights on! Ours was delayed till 7:30, and they were asking passengers to arrive 4 hours early.

Mom and Dad decided they were going to try to make it out of Denver before they were snowed in, so they drove us to the airport. What should have been a 45-minute drive took us about an hour (not too bad!). We made it to our gate, and sat there, looking out the windows, certain that now that we were officially stranded at the airport (Denver roads were so bad a lot of them were closed), our flight would surely get canceled. We looked up once, and saw on the board that they had delayed our flight till 9:30. Ugh. Then soon after that, Sun Country got on the speaker system and let us know that they had a flight due to arrive in 20 minutes, and that they wanted to board us and get us out as soon as possible. All of that happened as planned - the flight arrived, they cleaned it, we got on, and .... we sat on the plane for two hours (waiting on last-minute forgotten luggage, de-icing, who knows what). We finally took off at 10:30. In bed at home at 1:30 that night. Happy anniversary to Chris and me.