the end....

Last weekend, Jeff and the kids took their last ski trip of the season... sniff. This winter has been our best ever, I think. Jeff overheard a conversation the other day. A man from the south was asking a guy from Michigan how he handled such long, cold winters every year. The guy simply answered, you find something you love that you can only do during the winter. He went on to answer that for some people up here it's snowmobiling or ice fishing... but for him it was skiing. Skiing has truly made a difference in how we viewed winter this year. We watched forecasts constantly, lamenting warmer weather and hoping for more snow! Dreading the end of cold and snow (which meant skiing would come to an end).... made it come all that much faster! Last year we were trapped in the city by classes on the weekends which made getting out and around in the cold and snow depressing. This year (with the plan I mentioned at the first of the year)... we were free from plans most weekends which gave Jeff and the kids so much time to go out and embrace winter. Even the fact that the kids (mainly Alex) ice skated more this winter, made winter fly by! Yes, we could ice skate indoors, but I prefer outside for several reasons. Partially because I feel our kids spend way too much time indoors sometimes, and outside is good. But also because it makes us embrace winter as well... it has a season, we again watched the weather, and hoped to be able to get in a least a couple more skates before the season ended. It sure made the end of February (the closing of the city rinks) arrive in a hurry. Even the additional two weeks that the rink at Millennium Park was open disappeared in the blink of an eye.

And with that... the photos from the final trip of the season...

The kids ready to ski at Devil's Head...

Jeff's self portrait :-)
(you can even see his hand and the camera reflected in his goggles).

Conditions got a bit messy, so they headed to the pool for a while with friends. Later that night, they went out again to do some night skiing.

Alex and friend on the chair lift...
Just Alex...
Clara and friend...
And now, Alex and Clara...
Their friends were done in for the day, so Jeff and the kids got in another hour and a half of skiing after the friends had gone back to the hotel.

The next morning, they got up and headed over to Cascade for a little more skiing...
The typical "Alex on a chairlift" photo...
The kids....
The view from the top...
The whole skiing group...
... taken by the non-skier of the bunch.

Now on to embrace spring and a whole new bunch of outdoor things to do!!