Christmas in the Mountains - Park City

We spent our winter vacation this year in Park City, Utah - but first, Santa had to come early. S was very proud of her salted caramel dark chocolate cookies. We had a lovely 'Christmas' celebration on December 23rd and then flew early to Salt Lake City on December 24th.  The girls were great travelers for the flight and short ride to Park City.

For our first evening, we got S all ready for ski school. C giggled at seeing Riperoo again (he's the ski school mascot across 'Vail Resorts Company' so she saw him last year at Beaver Creek too) and then we enjoyed some arts and crafts at Park City Mountain Resort before the Santa torchlight parade. The pictures don't quite do it justice but the mountain transformed from complete darkness to red lights coming to Santa arriving.

For our first two days, S and J went off skiing while C and I hung out together. S graduated from Level 2 to Level 3 on her first day and then Level 3 to Level 4 on her second day. She rode the chair lifts and mastered everything for Level 4 too. She decided not to ski anymore after these two full days, but she is very excited to ski more in Cincinnati soon.

Some highlights from the rest of our time include:

Lots of fun at the hotel activities area. The girls enjoyed ornament painting, piggy bank painting (they each chose turtles that are now proudly displayed in their rooms), a walk with a sled, air hockey, and swimming.

A visit to the Olympic Museum. J and S rode a power ski simulator and then all of us except for C did a ski jump simulator. S was the only one to land all three of her simulated jumps.

My personal favorite - an evening sleigh ride through the mountains. When I saw this as a suggested activity, I knew we had to do this - I booked a 6:30pm sleigh ride out of a hotel in Deer Valley and it didn't disappoint. The evening we were out was perfectly clear - we could see so many stars and really enjoyed this experience.

The Salt Lake City Children's Museum - during J's last full day of skiing, the girls and I took a day trip back to Salt Lake City for a few hours at the Children's Museum - this was a great few hours. S and C loved playing together and balanced the bigger kid stuff with the littler kid stuff really well. I didn't take many pictures this day but here's one of the girls at the Comic exhibit together.

All in all this was a great trip for our Christmas vacation and a great way to end an amazing year of travel for us.