Whiting / Hudson Ski Trip 2013.

Chugga Chugga Choo Choo is one of Quinn's favorite books (we both have it memorized). In the beginning, you see the train loaded up with all sorts of different toys, none of which Quinn has ever paid much attention to (except maybe the bear). When I was reading it to him last night, he suddenly exclaimed Princess!! 

You can tell that he was with his three girl cousins for several days. 

Haidyn and Reese are sort of in a girl's only phase right now (He can't be in our tea party! Tea parties aren't for boys!), but they were nice to still include him most of the time. Quinn had a few mornings of 10am naps (i.e. total meltdowns early in the day), and I'll chalk that up to having too much fun and loving being on vacation with the whole family (Dad!). Otherwise, he was his same emotional, mostly-happy self. He's sort of a train wreck a lot of the time and his emotions are generally all over the place (he was terrified of Baby Nora most of the trip), but he really is the sweetest boy. He's just high energy and high emotion, which is super awesome when he's happy, happy, happy!

West was a perfect baby and a mostly-perfect traveler (save it be for the basically two hours of nursing on the flight home - I told Mike I was a negative-A cup by the time we landed). It still surprises me that he's turned into such a mellow baby. He slept perfectly the whole trip (I hate using such extreme words, but he really did), was always pretty happy and just kept things really easy (which is wonderful when his elder brother is anything but). I really like West. Quinn is nice too, but we're in a new routine of time outs at least a half-dozen times per day, and let's just say it's a good thing that West is in a helmet for the next few months. 

Colorado was nice. Mountains! Fresh (freezing.) air! We landed in Colorado Springs Tuesday afternoon and drove straight up to Winter Park where we had rented a cabin for three nights. It was really beautiful and cozy and both of our families had lots of space to stretch our legs. Kera and I mostly stayed home with the littles while Patrick and Mike skied / snowboarded. The girl's played in the hot tub, introduced Quinn to Bubble Guppies (we don't venture beyond Gabba and Thomas very often), and Kera and I got out to explore a few times. Next year, I fully plan on neither being nursing nor pregnant (like I've been the past three trips!) and cannot wait to get back on skis. I love my babies but I've entirely forgotten what an entire day of freedom feels like, but that's a topic for another day. We spent the last few days in Colorado Springs at Patrick and Kera's pretty house. It was freezing and the snow came down sideways for about 24 hours (blizzard?) but we had a good time just hanging out, eating yummy food, and spending a few hours with Mike's little brother Dan and his girlfriend Sonia Saturday afternoon. 

It isn't always easy to travel with little ones, but it is always so worth it! My best strategy has been to be organized, prepared and flexible. It all works out in the end, even if things get sort of crazy sometimes. I think that we do well (fine.) traveling with our boys because we're really just used to it, and because we keep our expectations are appropriately set. No matter how bad it gets (and it has gotten bad before), the plane has to land at some point and that makes it so much easier to cope. We're a traveling circus at this point (so. much. stuff.) and there have been some seriously stressful situations (I almost got kicked off of a plane once - in all seriousness), but I love that we've dragged our babies on airplanes so many times (41 flights for Quinn now!). Happy memories, and some of them will make for really good stories in the years to come.

I wish I would have taken more photos (I say that every year) - and that maybe we would have gotten one with all four of us in it (seemingly impossible)! Colorado is beautiful.

2011 Trip (when Quinn was just a little nugget and I made promises of skiing the following year)
2012 Trip (when I was 13-ish weeks pregnant with West and spent lots of time being sick)