alpine slide

Park City with the Gerins Summer 2017

While the Gerins were in town, we spent a day taking in the fresh mountain air and gorgeous views in Park City. At such a high altitude, a relatively mild summer day felt scorching and we were all a little sunburned, altitude-stricken and exhausted at the end of our adventures, but Samantha and Amelia enjoyed showing Noah the ropes. Hailey and Meredith had a baby/toddler playdate at home with Grammy and Grandpa, so it was just the older sibs this time!

Noah and Amelia wasted no time bringing on the silliness.

First stop: riding the chair lift up to the Alpine Slide. Whenever we ride a chair lift, the twins always ask a million questions about what happens if they fall out. “AND THEN WE WILL DIE,” they pronounce, solemnly.

Trying not to die on the chair lift.

Noah provided comic relief whenever the girls got cranky.

Last October on the Alpine Slide:

Here we go! It’s always a fight over who gets to sit with Daddy. The girls came up with a reluctant compromise that whoever sat with Daddy on the Slide, HAD to sit with me on the Coaster. I’m always the second choice, and the girls don’t even pretend to hide that fact!

Oh my… mining for gems turned out to be the girls’ favorite part of the whole day (maybe vacation?) They are totally obsessed with the bag of polished rocks they collected and still keep them by their bedsides.

Proud owner of polished rocks!

For unexplained reasons, the twins were also excited about this slow-moving waterless tube hill.

Time to bounce! Samantha showed off her flips, while Amelia took a more conservative straight up and down approach.

Amelia on the trampoline last year:

What next?

Hugs!

The ropes course looked pretty challenging, but everyone hung in there and did well.

Samantha on the ropes last year:

Noah was so cute up there!

Zipline time.

Weeeee!

Even Noah tried it!

Everyone was tired by the afternoon and ready to go, but being gluttons for punishment, Jake and I stayed to take the girls on the promised Alpine Coaster while everyone else headed home. I should probably read my old blog posts once in a while before planned excursions because the last time we were at Park City, I wrote a note to my future self, imploring myself to remember to quit while I was ahead. History repeated itself as 45 minutes, three bathroom breaks, two shaved ices and two very sunburned and tired twins later, we made it back down the mountain. We don’t even have pictures to show for all our heroic effort, so here’s the coaster from last year. It’s way faster than the slide and the girls had a blast, but I don’t know that I’d go through waiting in that torturous line with them again, thrilling coaster or not.

See you next time, Park City.

Lots of love,

Park City and the Alpine Slide

We LOVE Park City Mountain Resort, especially when we don’t have to deal with snow! It was the perfect day for us to get our fall colors fix as we drove up the canyon and met Aunt Sarah, Uncle Mike and their dog, Roger, in the mountains for a day in Park City. We were dressed for cold weather and left Meredith behind with Grammy, thinking it would be chilly, but in hindsight, she would have had a great time in the fresh mountain air and being entertained by all the twins’ adventures. Sorry, Meredith– next time!

We rode up the chair lift, which was slightly terrifying holding onto these two– I kept imagining them slipping through the bars.

Beautiful golden Aspens.

We watched others go down the Alpine Slide on our way up.

A walk in the woods with our sleds.

Amelia was having a meltdown over riding with Daddy; fortunately, Samantha was happy to be with me and didn’t fight her for the coveted ride with Jake.

Weeeeee!

Fun times hanging out with Uncle Mike and Aunt Sarah.

The twins were just barely tall enough to go down the Alpine Coaster, which was way more of an adrenaline rush than the Slide, I must say. Being total thrill junkies, the twins loved every minute of it. I don’t think Jake used the hand brake at all, so Amelia definitely got the more exhilarating ride, while Samantha and I took the fun, but cautious route (i.e. someone else was riding my tail the entire time because I was going too slow).

It was hilarious watching these two bounce on the bungee jumper. Amelia was totally content going up and down, while Samantha experimented with flips.

We couldn’t escape without doing the zipline.

Future mountaineers on the ropes course.

When we are having a great time, it’s hard to quit when we’re ahead, which is definitely what we should have done this particular day. Having skipped their nap to do more activities, the twins were in full on hangry/tired/sunburned/altitude sickness mode and we dragged them, screaming, out of the serene mountains and into the car.

At one point, Amelia was sobbing incoherently that she wanted a drink, and when I offered her my water bottle, she screamed, “NO! I WANT SPARKLING WATERRRRRRRRR!”

We don’t usually drink sparkling water no less have it on hand, so I have no idea where that outburst came from. You could tell from the looks of people passing by that they must have thought we were horrible parents for raising such spoiled children. Sigh.

On the otherwise gorgeous ride home, Samantha and Amelia went from overtired and cranky to wild and silly, and only slept the last 10 minutes of the ride. All Jake and I wanted was to enjoy a nice, QUIET ride through the mountains… argh! I would like to remind my future self to always call it quits when you’re ahead.

Back at home, Meredith had a grand time building a new fire pit in the backyard with Uncle Mike, Ali and Grammy.