The Alpha and the Omega. OOOH and we totally flew a helicopter.
Happy Birthday to Hank!
And for the big, grand celebration? A ski weekend. And let me tell you, as in all things Pantier, it has been epic.
Cue the dramatic music. And it needs to be something from a movie like SuperBad or some other awful 12YO movie involving someone throwing up.
Yep. In my car. And Hank was already up there skiing, so I was solo. Rats.
It was the first time, the Alpha, the beginning, I’m afraid. Poor little E tossed his cookies (well, just his apple juice and cantaloup, to really take you there) in a tragic carsick moment about 40 minutes into our trip. This resulted in:
a.) taking him, carseat and all, into a gas station and giving him a bath in a cold gross sink and swabbing him down with all of the hand sanitizer and lotion in my bag, or
b.) taking his carseat completely apart to wash it out as best I could, then not being able to put it back together, or
c.) accidentally opening the big, metal restroom door on his big toe and splitting it open, after just finishing up calming him down from getting sick and then being naked and cold in a gas station bathroom (him, not me; that would have been really tragic), or
d.) giving up for a few minutes and sitting right down in the corner of the gas station and crying with him, while the Goldfish held my hand and asked me if he could help me put the carseat back together, or
e.) being thankful that there was a WalMart (I’ve never been thankful for that ginormous store until this moment) across the parking lot so that I could just buy a new carseat, or
f.) realizing that we had all been MIA for an hour and half by this point and there were people in Keystone waiting for us and wondering if we had been in a terrible accident and, by the way, I had left my phone in the vomitus car the entire time, or
g.) all of the above.
But then, we finally arrived and cleaned up spic and span and everything was awesome.
The boys slept like rocks in this alpine air and the next morning, we piled into a gondola and went to the top. Me, on teleskis for the first time ever; the Goldfish, on that new snowboard for the first time ever; and the Terror, in the kid carrier on Hank’s back and “skiing” for the first time ever.
Yeehaw!
And that evening, we… went… TUBING!
The boys were not excited at all. They didn’t run down the hall toward the fire door, or miss the elevator.
They also were not stoked about riding the gondola at night or at even the thought about going to KidTopia. (They were actually trying to not look excited.)
But they couldn’t keep that up for too long.
The Terror let me play around with bouncing my flash off of stuff and lighting his face up all weird and spooky.
That was really fun for me. I love that my boys entertain me.
Especially when this one will. He has the funniest expressions.
He’s kind of handsome and cool and in his words, he “rocks it like a teenager.”
Know where we ended up at the end of the gondola ride? Here. KidTopia.
I must say that Keystone has got it going on for kids. This snow fort/castle blew their minds. It has slides and a tunnel and a throne and it… well… kicks it like a teenager.
And right on the other side of that snow fort are two yurts, which are the gateway to the tubing hill.
Oh. My. Goodness. I’m sure that Hank will be posting GoPro footage of that within a couple of days, and while it’s dark, you can hear screaming and laughing and, well, that about sums it up. I think we went 0-40 in 2 seconds. And then I peed my pants. And then I fell off the magic carpet, which is the hardest thing to do on the mountain (not to fall off of, mind you, but to get on the darn thing). And then we tubed more and more and more.
And then?
The Omega. The End. The end of two words that our baby boy has been saying, both of which have been precious. He has only called his big brother, “Semeeee,” but on this night? He said his real name. Plain as day. And he’s been saying it ever since. And the other word? Thomas, for Thomas the Train. It’s been “Nahmeese” until this weekend. Now, all of a sudden, also as plain as day. Thomas.
And that is that. The end of one thing and the beginning of everything else. Sometimes it goes too fast for me, but I’ll hang on to every nugget and every memory as best I can, because I love the growth part just as much.
But now, to one of the highlights of the weekend. Flying a helicopter.
The Terror is absolutely convinced that the gondolas are helicopters. This particular one was his, and he was flying it.
He talked about it nonstop. About how much fun this ride was. About how he wanted to ride it more, more, more, more, more, MORE.
And then I took this picture below. Which makes me laugh. Every time I see it.
Whooo-eeee.
It does sort of show how tired and pooped out we were.
But then, the helicoptergondola ride was over, and we dragged ourselves back to the condo and tucked ourselves into bed.
There’s more to come tomorrow…
Because…
The Goldfish becomes a snowboarder.
