Joseph's Big Birthday/Easter

It's a party -- and the Arvada Fire Department was invited to join in the fun!  What a surprise for Joseph's 5th Birthday Party when the doorbell rang and it was the Arvada Fire Department with one of their pumper trucks!  No, it wasn't because of the threat of too many candles leftover from Papa's birthday cake, but Joseph's Uncle Dale arranged to have them show up and let all of the kids at the party tour the pumper truck.  What fun for everyone!

They even broke out the hose and let all of the kids squirt water down the block - free car washes for all of the parents too!  Here's Joseph manning the hose.

Sophie and Bella admiring the big fire truck.

Then came Easter Sunday with sunrise mass at Spirit of Christ followed by a fabulous brunch at Bradley & Jolene's house with a big Easter egg hunt!  We are so fortunate to have our children and grandchildren live so close to us so we can enjoy all the fun in their lives too!

Why We Live Here!

The fact that we can enjoy ALL of the seasons here in Colorado in addition to being able to do all the fun stuff that we get to do with our children and grandchildren is what keeps us here!  Heres a shot taken from atop Dercum Mountain at Keystone overlooking the Dillon Valley.

These are the kind of sunsets we get to enjoy while skiing and on our drives up to Keystone in the winter:)  Pretty much the same as the previous shot, but in the late afternoon.  (Another reason it's fun to do night skiing)

More Keystone sunset shots......

Going over Loveland Pass on the way to Keystone......

Looking from Arapaohe Basin ski area towards Keystone at sunset.

Sometimes the roads aren't always the easiest to traverse.  This was taken in early May - not in the middle of winter!  What an awesome winter this was with the exceptional amount of snow we got! 

Yeah, that cornice is about 25'-30' tall!

Oh yeah, another benefit of living in Colorado is the availability to see fun cultural events too.  We were able to get last minute tickets to see Elton John in Denver in mid April.  This shot of his piano was taken before the show started from our seats in the first row! 

An awesome performance by Elton with just him and his piano - no backup band or singers!

Keystone Condo Fun With The Kids And Grandkids

When we go up to Keystone for the weekend, we all play pretty hard during the days, but we have excellent cooks (Sara and Jolene) who take turns with the meal planning.  Just another typical dinner in the condo with all ten of us having fun!

Bradley playing horsey with Andrew and Bella

Hey, he makes a pretty good horsey, let's all pile on!  Joseph, Andrew, Bella, and Sophie going for a ride:)

Andrew and Joseph having fun

Always more fun and cozy to have a fire going while at Keystone!

Bradley and the boys getting ready to go down to the pool and hot tub after a long day of skiing

Joseph is Doing Blacks!!

Hey Bradley, I was only joking when I said it would be kind of fun if Joseph could do a black ski run before his 5th birthday!  Anyway, Joseph didn't think it was much of a challenge, so he took his Papa up on the offer and was skiing Go Devil (one of the steeper black runs at Keystone) the week before his 5th birthday and it's been all downhill (literally) since then.  After only 4 or 5 lessons, Joseph is now skiing all of the green (although he's not that fond of them because they are boring) runs, all of the blue runs, and several of the blacks at Keystone!  Here he is following Bradley down Go Devil.....

Joseph going down the steeper portion of Go Devil:)  Pizza (snowplowing) is critical on the steeper parts!

Not to be out-done by her nephew Joseph, Sara decided to tackle Go Devil with James this year too!  They made it to the bottom unscathed on yet another bluebird day at Keystone.  Sara has improved dramatically this year too and does black runs with the rest of the Stolz clan.  She's even tried a few tree runs with us and kind of enjoys it!

Winter Fun at Vail and Keystone

Funny how it seems that everyone is always having fun while skiing!  Dianna and Sara taking a little break while posing by the bear carving at Vail.

Just another powder day (locals call it POW) at Vail this winter.  LOTS of those, so both Dianna and I took advantage of it and improved our abilities to ski the deeper stuff this year!

Of course, our favorite (Keystone) was never denied the big fresh dumps of POW that Vail and other Summit County resorts received this year.

Dianna and Sara enjoying another bluebird day of skiing at Keystone:)

What the ????  One might think that Dianna and I got lost while skiing through the 'windows' at Keystone!  We were doing a few runs through the trees and had a blast while exploring some of the newer more difficult runs.  We still love our fresh courdoroy but have fun doing tree runs too!

We even got Bradley and Jolene doing some of the tree runs back in the North Bowl of Keystone.

Of course, our oldest grandson, Joseph was quickly becoming hooked on skiing after only his third lesson and really enjoys skiing with the adults now.  Bradley leading the way for Joseph while playing the air guitar!

Of course, dusk and night skiing at Keystone is really cool to do on warmer evenings!

Cat Skiing!!!!

February and March equate to some of the best skiing of the season and this year was no exception!  This year we all decided to try 'Cat Skiing' where you ride the ski lift to the top then get into a trailer which is pulled by one of the grooming Cats and ride on up above timberline into some of the best bowl skiing around!  Here's a shot of the cat pulling us up the hill.  It was kind of scary the first time, but we all enjoyed it so much that we tried to do it every time we got a chance with fresh powder:)

 The top of the North Peak at Keystone - we're ready to trek downhill!

 

  Sara and James on their first cat trip to North Peak at Keystone....

 Bradley's first cat trip with James......

 Jolene enjoying some of the deep snow back in the bowl of North Peak

This was an awesome year for snow - Vail and Breckenridge set all-time records with over 500" this year while Keystone came close to setting a record too!

We're MILLIONAIRES!!!!!!

Thanks to the IT geeks at Vail resorts, we've been tracking the vertical footage that we've skied this season.  After 40 days of skiing (so far) this winter, BOTH Dianna and I have each reached the 1 Million foot benchmark!!!  WOO HOO!!!!
But we're not done yet ---- Kent set a goal to reach 1,500,000 feet (it looks cooler that way) before the end of the season and it looks like that will easily happen before Keystone closes on April 10th:(.  While chasing that goal on weekends in addition to working our full-time jobs back in Arvada during the week, we both managed to stay on Keystone's Top Ten Leaderboard too!  (Dianna is the ONLY female in Keystone's top ten skiers)  Not too bad for a couple of recreational skiers.....