Warm Adventures: February 2018

As I write this, the temperature is -8 Celsius and it is only suppose to get up to -6 today. It's been seriously cold the last few days. Fountains in town are frozen and the kids have been making ice sculptures on our balcony. A place they typically only play on in the warmer months.

Earlier this month we went on our annual ski holiday. Every February, the schools close down for two weeks (scattered times) for what is called sport holiday. This is the time when most people do 1 of 2 things - go snow skiing or go somewhere warm to escape the cold. Although a warm vacation is tempting, we chose to ski again. It has become a family tradition.

Race day

For the past four years we have gone to Nauders, Austria right on the Swiss, Italian, Austrian border. It has a small ski area with a ski school for the kids. We love it and every year we say next year we are going to try some place different, not because we don't enjoy it - We do! But we don't typically like to go back to the same spot each year - we aren't normally creatures of habit when it comes to our travel adventures. But there is just something about this area that keeps drawing us back. And the kids really look forward to it, which speaks volumes.

While we typically rent an apartment hotel and do our own cooking (and cleaning), this year we booked a hotel with Half-board (meals included). What a treat to have a buffet breakfast and delicious warm dinner prepared every day. And no cleaning up! It was heaven.

We typically ski at least 5 days with one day off to rest and explore. I took one extra day off as I had some work I needed to catch up on. Also Miles was a bit under the weather one day, so we stayed in and played games. Thanks to my traveling essential oils kit, he was back on the slopes by the next day. Oils to the rescue!

The conditions were amazing this year, tons of fresh snow which made skiing so enjoyable. On our day off, we went on a beautiful hike, saw some awesome ice sculptures and did a bit of ice skating and sledding. The kids loved playing in the 3 - 4 feet of fresh, untouched snow. I was even afraid we were going to lose them in it.

Our 1st trip together on the big chairlift

As most of you know, Ali is a bit of a daredevil, quite athletic and took to skiing right away. She has been doing red slopes for a few years now and is honestly hard to keep up with. Her technique however leaves something to be desired. This year was Miles first year out of the kiddie area. He started on the big slopes, learning technique and riding the big chair lift. Erik and I would see him a couple of times and he was always last in line and a bit slower than the rest of the group. A couple of times I saw him hanging on for dear life to the T-bar lift, and it was all I could do not to go rescue him myself. On Thursday they all do a small race which is fun to watch. On Friday, the last day of the ski holiday Miles surprised us all when he was able to ski down the entire mountain with us! I cannot tell you what a proud moment this was for us as a family. He was actually quite good. His technique was great, going back and forth like he was taught. A bit unlike his daredevil sister whose skis tend to point straight down the mountain. This was a great ski holiday.