A weekend in Illinois

I traveled to Illinois this past weekend to visit my dad and family.  Eric and the boys stayed at home.  

The organization, the Order of St. Francis that my mom belonged to had their monthly meeting on Sunday.  We were all invited as they also had a memorial for my mom.  It was so sweet and heart warming to listen as her friends shared such kind words and memories of my mom.  We all miss her so much.

Besides skiing....

We always take an off day from skiing halfway through our trip.  We enjoy going to Salt Lake City to  explore.  This year we started with lunch at In and Out Burger at Ben's request.  Then we ventured off to Thanksgiving Point to the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  It ended up being a super fun find for our family.  This was a hands on children's museum complete with a ropes course above all of the exhibits.  The boys all explored that while I took pictures.  Next we played with nerf darts at Dart Nation.  There's something fun about shooting styrofoam darts at your kids and being shot back by them!  A fun time was had by all!

  

We are all looking forward to our next ski trip to Deer Valley next winter!

Skiing!

We spent the first week of school after winter break at a different kind of school, ski school!  And nobody was too sad about that!

This was our 9th year taking the kids to Deer Valley, UT to ski, and one of our best.  The boys are all improving so much and can out ski Eric and I, officially now.  I am so grateful that we began this family ski vacation tradition years ago!

The kids went to ski school for 3 days and then we all skied together on the 4th ski day.

We ate at the Seafood Buffet one night at Snow Park Lodge.  The boys all ate lots of crab legs and were adventurous in trying other delicious foods as well.  We ate out at a different place each night of our trip!

We celebrated the end of successful ski days with sugary snacks and spiked coffees!

While the boys are in ski school, Eric and I enjoy our day dates, spending the day together skiing and having lunch.  Thursday we ate at the skiers buffet at the Stein Eriksen lodge.  I might have enjoyed these slippers just as much as the 12 desserts that I indulged in!  What a luxury to take off our ski boots while having lunch and slipping on these babies!

It began to snow while we had lunch.  Oh so pretty!

Nick and Sam like to ski as fast as possible down the mountain, while Ben likes to take his time, skiing in and out of the trees and over each and every bump!  

Our 3 little monkeys on the chairlift!

Ben has simply summed up our trip!