The Vacation that Was....n't

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how I love to travel.  The planning, anticipation, and of course, the execution of those plans.  For the past few months, we had been getting ready for a family vacation.  We are blessed to have very generous friends who allowed us to stay in their beautiful home in Breckenridge, Colorado.  The mountains, cold weather, SKIING!  My brother, sister-in-law, and I had been anxious for months to hit the slopes.  But you know what they say about the best laid plans......

Really, I don't know where to begin.  (be prepared for my following sporadic and rambling comments)  Let's see....first off, my dad does NOT like to fly.  I doubt he slept the night before our flight.  He and my mom were on the first flight out with Kris, Sadie, and me.  The closer we got to the airport, the higher his heart rate.  Security had to stop and search him, thanks to a knee replacement that causes metal detectors to go off.  But that was to be expected.  No big surprise there.  The flight was fine, dad survived, we made it safely.

We got to the house first, unloaded our stuff, and went back to the cute town of Breckenridge to shop until Josh and the gang got there.  It was taking them longer than it should have.  Google, MapQuest, I don't know what they blamed, but they ended up in Winter Park at one point.  Yeah, that's not on the path to Breckenridge.

When they finally got there, Josh wasn't feeling too good.  Oh dear, you can't be getting sick, Josh!  He wasn't acting like his normal self either.

My nephews (almost 5 and 2 years old) had been warned of the gas fireplace.  It's hot.  Hot.  Don't get close.  Hot.  The two year old decided he wanted to blow out the flames as though he was blowing out a candle.  Poor little guy got too close and burned his lips and chin on the glass.  I mean, BURNED his lips and chin.

We all settle in for the night - big day of skiing tomorrow, we need our rest.  ha ha ha!!  Sadie decided to wake up at 1:00 a.m.  She thought it would be fun to keep us up by coughing, crying, sleeping thirty minutes, wake up and play for a while.  And start all over - cough, cry, snooze, play, cough, cry, nap, play.  The plan was to leave around 7:30 in order to get Zay to ski school on time.  The morning news:  Josh is really sick and has to go to the doctor.  NNOOOOOO!!!!  I didn't witness it, but the word on the street is that Josh fell down the stairs before leaving for the doctor.

After sitting around for a while (I didn't think it wise to go skiing completely alone.  What if I'd skied off a cliff and nobody could find me?), I decided to get the boys dressed in their ski clothes and go out to play in the snow.  That lasted all of three minutes.  Frustrated, I came in and told Kris to get me out of there.

In the mean time, we got word from Emily that Josh's O2 saturation level was at 80%.  That's not good.  He was at the doc's office hooked up to oxygen.  He came home and had to have oxygen delivered to the house.  Day one of skiing down the drain.  Or not.  Emily and I were able to get to the slopes in time to ski for a couple of hours.  It was a beautiful afternoon for skiing!

After being on the oxygen for several hours, Josh said that he was feeling better and planned to ski the next day.  Good idea?  I'm not so sure.

Once again, Sadie didn't sleep well.  Which means that neither Kris nor I slept well.  But I wasn't going to let that stop me from a day on the mountain.  We all made it to the resort without any major mishaps.  Zay decided to sign up for ski school, Josh got his skis rented, and we're off!!  Another beautiful morning.  However, by the time we stopped for lunch, Josh was not doing well.  He was acting weird.  I knew something wasn't right.  We went back out for more, but it started snowing.  And getting colder.  It was no longer as much fun.  We called it a day a little after 2:00.  The "plan" was for us to all stay in town, shop, and have dinner.  That didn't happen.  Josh had to go home to get back on the oxygen, some of us stayed in town, but the restaurant where we wanted to eat was busy with a wait....we went home.  Time to pack up anyway.

We're busy getting our things together, Emily comes downstairs.  Wait, Emily slips down the stairs.  Her toes....broken?  Here we go again.

We wake up to somewhat of a snow storm with icy roads.  But we had a flight to catch, so off we go.   Through the ice and snow.  It was slow going most of the way.

Airport, security pat down for my dad, full flight, back in Houston.  I think I saw some of the Dunns kissing the ground when we got back to Texas.

Everyone gets home.....Emily wakes up the next morning with a bruised and swollen foot AND the flu.  The following day, my mom gets the flu.  Then my dad.  Sadie has been running fever.  When will this bad luck end?!

Even with all the bad luck and plans that crumbled before our eyes, we made family memories.  And the skiing was great.  After a day or two I have been able to laugh about it.  I'd go back again in a minute, but I have a feeling that my brother would rather stay at home.