Vail 2012

So, a week turned into three, sorry about that.  I have spent the last few weeks getting acclimated to my new recruiting position at work.  In case you don't know already, I am moving from being an accountant to being a recruiter for our internships and staff in the accounting department.  I am excited about the new challenges this job will bring.  So far so good, but I have lots of travel in my new position.  I was in Phoenix all last week, headed to Lubbock this week, and then to Austin the week after.  Lucky for me, this does give me some more time to read.  I find that I mainly only read on airplanes and on vacation.  So hopefully I can catch up on a few books I have lying around.

But on to the point of this post.  About a month ago Casey and I got to go to Vail and ski for a few days.  It was right after my grandfather passed away so it was a much needed therapeutic trip.  We went with our friends Sarah and Ryan, Heath and Julie, Leslie and Riley, Katie and Kyle, Annie and Andrew, and my cousin Jenny met us as well as our friend Robbie from OU.  It was a great little weekend and I have a few pictures to recap.  A big thanks to Sarah, who let us use her family cabin for the weekend.  It's a fabulous little cabin in Vail only about 5-10 minutes from the mountain.  We went there several times in college, but this was our first trip post-college and it was an absolute blast.

We got in on a Thursday night, and sweet Katie picked me, Casey, Leslie, and Riley up from the airport (When you are trying to plan a trip with people that live in Denver, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Washington DC it can be a little tricky).  We spent Thursday night eating pizza and driving into the mountains.  It was fun to catch up with everyone on the way.

Friday morning we woke up early to go get our skis and get in a full day of skiing.  We couldn't have asked for better weather.  It was sunny the whole time with little wind.  We spent Friday morning warming up with lots of greens (the blues we waited until after lunch).  It always takes me a run or two to get the skiing thing down.  It really is like riding a bike though, once you are up and going it naturally comes back to you.  Everyone skied except Jenny who snowboarded (she has her own board along with her fluorescent ski suit and helmet, which could also be the reason she was offered weed on one of the ski lifts; she politely declined).  Friday night Annie and Andrew drove in from Denver and we went into town and had dinner and drinks in downtown Vail.  We showed our age here.  After we finished dinner about 10pm, we boarded the bus to go back to the cabin.  We were literally all falling asleep on the way home only to find all of the college kids staying in Vail getting on at each stop.  Most of them laughed at us when we got off, telling us we were going the wrong way.  We didn't care as we have accepted the fact that we are closer to 30 than 21 and needed our sleep to ski the next day.

Saturday we mostly did blues (go us).  I only fell once and it was while I was waiting on Casey at one of the midway points down the specific run we were on.  We wrapped up with celebratory drinks at one of the bars close to the ski entrance.  Saturday night we were in for a treat.  Riley cooked homemade enchiladas and they were to die for.  We stayed in Saturday night and played games.  Our favorite was a cross between charades, Taboo, and catch phrase.  It was actually quite fun and entertaining.

Sunday Casey and I headed back to Denver with Jenny while the others stayed for one more day of skiing.  We both needed to be back in Dallas for work so we had to cut our piece of the trip rather short. Jenny was a dear and got us to the airport in time for us to catch an earlier flight to Dallas.  We were landed, home, and unpacked before we were even originally set to leave, which was nice.

Here are a few fun pictures from our trip:

 Miss Casey is ready to go!

 Beautiful mountains.

We were so thankful for the good weather! 

 The girls:  Katie, Me, Casey, Sarah, Jenny (with her flurescent goggles).

 The view right before the start of one of our runs.  Breathtaking.

 Another.

 Pic of Ryan going down the mountain.  He was a trooper, he hadn't skied in a long time (he normally snowboards), but he hung in there and did pretty good on Day 2.

 The gang on Day one:  Julie, Me, Kyle, Katie, Riley, Heath, Sarah, Ryan, Casey, Jenny, and Leslie (if you look at Ryan's hat closely it has little braids on the side.  When he fell once, someone behind him said "Ma'am are you ok?"  I think they were probably really creeped out when  they saw him turn around and was actually a man with a full beard).

Me, Sarah, and Casey on the last day.

All in all it was a great trip.  Always good to hang out with new and old friends.  Lots of fun memories and jokes taken away from our weekend in Vail.

Until next time, ciao for now.