Before winter officially started, John purchased a Sugarbush Quad Pack (4 tickets) and a Mad Card (3 tickets) for me to use. As the adviser to the Ski and Snowboard club, he gets a pass pretty much anywhere he wants. Although Smuggs is closer, his loyalty lies with Mad River and Sugarbush makes more snow so he went with that pass.
By mid January, I hadn't used any of our tickets. So, we decided to try to do a Waitsfield Valley staycation for part of my February vacation. I looked into deals at Sugarbush and John called his good friend Garrett who lives in the valley. As it turns out, Garrett and his family were headed to Florida, so he offered up his house for us to use (as long as we watched his dogs).
Sunday was our 6 year anniversary. Tom and Cara offered to watch the kids, again. So, we dropped them off in the early afternoon, headed to Mad River for some couples ski time, had a beer at two separate apres spots, dropped our stuff of at our "staycation" digs, and went out to see music at the Hen of the Woods in Waterbury. We picked the sleeping children up on our way back.
Because it was Vermont Vacation week, Sugarbush was having a 2 for 1 ski lesson special. So, on Monday, we dropped the kids off at real ski lessons. Neither have ever taken a real ski lesson and they were fired up. Hazen basically had a private lesson all day because there were only 2 Micro bears. His instructor was amazed at how well he was already skiing.
Cally rocked it as a Mini Bear. She refined her parallel skiing that her dad had taught her, learned how to hockey stop, side slip, and herring bone!
And while the kids were in lessons, John and I skied lap after lap of groomers (because everything else was set up like cement). We even got to have a "date lunch".
Tuesday we skied as a family. Both of the kids were tearing up the Gatehouse lift-- willing and able to ski anything and everything. And the fun part was getting to ride the lift as a family!
We even got some runs in on Wednesday morning, too. Four straight days of skiing! We capped off our staycation with a visit to ECHO in Burlington.
Sadly, we did come home to a sick chicken. I'm trying not to really know the details because it involves blood and the butt area and pecking from other chickens. As I've said a million times, the chickens are a problem that I can't take on. Now we need to head out of town on Friday for five days and John is needing to apply ointment onto this chicken's butt and has moved it into the house. He leaves for Idaho for a week on Saturday......... Ugghh.
On a funnier note, Cally has started taking "selfies" of herself. This is our favorite!
