It’s now a few months since I last put fingers to keyboard so there is a bit of catching up to do. I will be brief in an effort not to bore you.

Basically the weekends in February, March and half of April Craig spent skiing and had a great time. He skied Eldora, Aspen, Aspen Highlands, Snowmass, Winter Park (x2), Mary Jane (x2), Copper (x3), Loveland, Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Steamboat Springs. The highlight for all of us (apart from the Aspen weekend in January) was the weekend we spent in Steamboat. A very pretty spot, we had been here last summer so it was good to see it in winter. And boy was there an abundance of snow. We drove up Friday night and the drive itself over Rabbit Ear Pass wasn’t pleasant. The road was steep and icy and we were very glad to arrive safely. We met up with 3 other families that were joining us for the weekend and we had a picnic dinner in the hotel breakfast room on the Friday night. On Saturday morning Amy and Craig headed over to the mountain to ski and Kyle, Ingrid and I headed downtown to check out the winter carnival that happened to be on. The main street was closed and they were having various horse races down a snow covered street. It was quite terrifying to watch, horses belting down the street sometimes towing people sitting on shovels, other times towing kids on skis and snowboards. It was fun to watch though.

We headed back to the mountain to pick Amy up after lunch and then we went back to the hotel to swim in the pool. Everyone else arrived back late afternoon and then we headed out to a ranch on the Yampa River for a sleigh ride and dinner. It was snowing and freezing cold but lots of fun. Each sleigh was drawn by two horses and carried about 20 people. After the ride it was back to the cabin for a steak dinner, served with potatoes and beans and it was delicious.  The guy who owned the property was a jack of all trades, dressed in a drizabone coat he drove the bus that takes the people out to the property and then he drove the sleigh. He also provided the entertainment as we ate dinner, singing, dancing and playing assorted instruments. He entertained the kids and made balloon animals. He was an interesting person and obviously enjoyed what he did for a living. He’d been to Australia and so he was quite taken with the Aussie visitors.

On Sunday Craig was burnt out from all the skiing he did on the Saturday so we headed back into town to watch the carnival some more. It snowed overnight again so there was lots of snow and ice on the roads. We headed home about lunch time to hopefully avoid the traffic and bad road conditions over the Pass.

So the rest of the winter months were spent skiing one day of the weekend and then either going to the movies, swimming or just hanging out. Storage Tek had an open day that we attended, finally getting to see Craig’s office and the inside of buildings we had driven past for 18 months. From the outside we could never see a lot and the small windows didn’t help. On the inside it was a completely different story, with brightly painted corridors and unusual art work throughout. We toured the various manufacturing areas and saw the large tape library robots working. The thing that most fascinated Amy and Kyle was the large white board in Craig’s office, so much for hi-tech kids.

Our friends from Michigan came to visit for a week in March and they didn’t get a good start to their holiday. Their flight on the Friday night was delayed and then cancelled meaning they had a stay over in Detroit before they could head out here on the Saturday morning. I had the bright idea of heading out to dinner on the way to the airport Friday night so we didn’t check on the flight arrival time before we left. After spending time at the airport Friday night finally to learn they wouldn’t be arriving we headed back out the next morning at 6 am to meet them. They looked like they had just stepped off the flight from Sydney so Saturday afternoon was spent with everyone sleeping and catching up.

We toured around most of the week and had one day skiing at Copper Mountain. They also have 2 kids so the four children were packed off to day care at the mountain and the four adults were able to hit the slopes (literally in some cases). I asked Amy if she wanted to ski and she said no she wanted to play with the kids. But then we learnt that the child care was for 4 years and under so we told her she would have to 4 for the day. Well the pressure was too much and as we drove to the mountain she said she would go skiing. Poor kid, the pressure of telling a white lie is just too much. Anyway when we went to drop the others off at day care she changed her mind again and said she would be four for the day. When we picked them up late that afternoon she said no-one asked how old she was and she and Kyle had a great day playing together. What a relief.

The week after Liz and Mark headed home to Michigan our Aussie friends Ingrid and David left, heading back to Sydney after a 2 ½ year stay in Colorado. We took them to the airport to see them off and now we will just have to drive to Sydney when we get home to visit them.

During this time Kyle has been attending a playgroup, which by coincidence turns out to be all boys. He has a great time and often talks about his best friends Cody and Ryan. He has just finished swimming lessons for the time being. The local outdoor pool opens again on Memorial Day holiday at the end of May so we’ll start swimming there soon.

Amy has a few weeks of school left before the big 3 month summer vacation. She has had a great year in Kindergarten and is looking forward to getting back to Burra so that she can catch the bus to school. She has become the social butterfly, constantly going to friend’s houses and having friends over. I haven’t told her yet but this won’t quite be so easy back in Burra.

We now have about 5 months of our stay left and we have a busy summer planned to fit everything in. We are off to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming with 2 other families in June for our big camping trip (and yes there will be bears at Yellowstone) and then we have weekend camping trips planned to Aspen, the Dinosaur National Monument, Turquoise Lake, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument and hopefully Mesa Verde National Park. We are also expecting a few visitors from home over summer so that will help with the accent adjustment. So the 3 month summer break could go by quickly if we fit everything in. Come late August Amy will start 1st grade at Monarch School and Kyle will commence pre-school at a local church in nearby Broomfield. About this time we hope to ship most of our furniture home so that it will coincide with our arrival back in Australia in October. So after summer things might be a bit hectic.

I hope everyone enjoys winter. At this stage we are looking forward to having 2 summers in a row but then if it is as hot as last summer maybe it won’t be quite so enjoyable. I’ll warn everyone now that both Amy and Kyle have pronounced American accents so please be patient. Kyle is very fond of saying “Howdy Partner” so we may have to debrief him on the plane trip home.

We now receive about 7 mail order catalogs weekly. One arrived recently  from an upmarket kitchen shop in Cherry Creek, one of the more affluent suburbs of Denver. Anyway, after flicking through a few pages there was an advertisement for lamb from some ranch in another state. The cost for 6 loin lamb chops was $75, yes you did read that correctly. For a rack of lamb or a boned leg of lamb it was $99 each. Can you believe it. And that wasn't all, you also had to add on delivery costs.

Amy’s school not only have fire drills they also have tornado drills.

Amy was invited over to her friend Sasha’s house after school. Sasha had received a trampoline for her birthday and I had to sign a waiver to say that if Amy went on the trampoline and hurt herself we wouldn’t sue them.

Now at the University of Alberta in Canada you can study a new fourth-year undergraduate course called “Reading Oprah”. As the newspaper article says the course “seeks to locate Oprah’s personality within a larger, intellectual and activist context, tracing her explicit and implicit affiliations with contemporary African-American intellectuals and casting her self-help work in a more politicised historical framework”.  Say what…..