COLO - excuse me I am going to be sick - RADO

Perhaps now enough time has passed for me to begin to recall our trip to Colorado to visit M & Ph, and to hit the slopes at Copper Mountain. Winter break. D & E are eager to learn to ski, and even more so to see where cousin Ph lives and hang with him and cool aunt M. So right away, night one, things turn ghastly. D gets a stomach flu that sets the tone for the whole trip. Here's D sleeping it off and talking to dad describing his condition, which improves enough by mid afternoon for us to check out of the hotel at Denver airport and head to Boulder. Where we check in to our new hotel and the flu continues.
We hang out with Ph and M in our room. Ph wants to eat donuts from Tastefully Toasted Donuts, mainly, which becomes a little routine, Ph blissfully gobbling chocolate dipped donuts while D, E, & I sit queasily in the background, exhaling.
When D was well enough to move, we went off to Copper. I highly recommend Copper for an easy, fun ski trip. We stayed in a great condo at the base of the mountain, really a short walk to all the action. Plus, shuttles take you around if you don't want to walk. You park your car and never need it again. There's lots of good food, and you can do all your own cooking.
So, our first activity was tubing, which was great and easy - a gentle introduction to the mountain for novices. But my ears were ringing and the altitude was kicking me in the head.

All was well in the morning, and skiing was really wonderful and came easily to both boys. Our instructor taught with enthusiasm, confidence, and patience and within 45 minutes of preliminaries we were on our first lift. We skiid all morning and into the afternoon. On our last run, E was struck by the flu that had knocked the wind out of D So that, sadly, was that for us and skiing. A brief but reasonably successful introduction, chased by a nasty virus.

I basically forced the boys to stand for a minute in front of the Colorado sign just for the sake of one little picture saying we'd been there. But they were both a wreck. We tried to find Buffalo Bill's grave, which was right on our way back to Boulder, but gave up when everyone was moaning and crampy.

Lord. So, last but not least, back in Boulder I checked us into a really gorgeous hotel -- the St. Julien -- since I figured we would be doing time there for the rest of our trip, boys sick as they were. There was a deep, deep tub for soaking, which I did quite a bit while hanging about in the room. And now Ph convinces me, even though he's been sick all day, that he's well enough to stay over with us and in fact his appetite is back and he's hungry as a bear and M gets him this stunningly gigantic sundae for dessert at dinner. And that night, it's Ph's turn to be sick and so ends our trip.