One of the harder parts of living so far away from family and friends is that keeping in touch by anything but text/email can be difficult. When you are separated by 6 time zones (or more), it can be a challenge to find a time where each party is awake and also available because many times while one family is getting ready for school while the other is making dinner and doing bedtime routines. It makes the spontaneous, random catch up call almost impossible and it means you can go weeks (or months) without being able to actually talk to a live person. I am not complaining, just stating the facts.
One of the perks of moving back home was that we were finally in the same time zone as so many of our old friends (and way out of sync with our new friends but that is a different post). Lives are still busy, of course, but at least now I don't have to calculate what time it is back home and wait for the appropriate time to call. I just pick up the phone. If they answer, great. If not, I know I can just try again without planning. Which is what I have been doing with my friend A.
A and her family were the first people we met when we started on our expat journey 8 years ago. They also worked for the same company B does and they had just moved to Santiago about a month before we did. They had a 6-month-old which was perfect because Stinkerbell was only a year older. We spent A LOT of time together for the 3 years we lived in the same place. And then we moved to Europe, they moved back to the US and it was a few years between visits. But we never lost touch completely. When we moved back, I called. And then it just became a ritual for me to talk with her while I am out walking the dog. She answers when she can and we talk all of the time for usually just a few minutes (she does have 4 under 9 after all).
During one of these calls, we hatched a plan to meet up. We had no real plans for Spring Break and neither did they so we decided to meet in Breck at the house and spend some quality time in the snow. Which is exactly what we did. I'm not saying there weren't some hiccups along the way (I'll get to those) but overall it was a fantastic vacation. And the kids couldn't have gotten along better! I think. We rarely saw them because they were either out in the snow, watching a movie, or just playing together somewhere. And I wouldn't have had it any other way!
The photos are from our first full day. We don't ski that day because we are all just getting used to the altitude (it's high - the house is at 10,000 feet). But that doesn't mean they couldn't roll around in those record high piles of snow...
Just missing the baby.
Snow banks taller than your average 4-year-old...
They took their "mountain" climbing seriously...
And then they threw themselves down the snow slides in various ways...
Suddenly, we had a bear amongst us who wanted to join the party...
Baby L and the snow storm...
