Second Home

We were lucky to spend our recent holiday weekend in Winter Park! Because this new house is going to be like a second home to us, we used this weekend to do some exploring, shopping and eating so that we could be more familiar with our home away from home. On Friday we went to Grand Lake and did some light shopping. We found some interesting shops -- one that featured quite the collection of slightly slutty fairy statuettes. Auntie Karen tried to initiate Addi's fairy obsession stage, but it didn't take . . . thankfully. We then spent the rest of the day playing games with Addi and basically vegging out -- holy killer sudoku overload. We played game after game of Candyland and spent many hours in Addi's fort (bunkbed) reading books and playing monster.

Even though he sported a gimp arm the entire weekend, Steve could still throw down at Candyland.

Auntie Karen had this magical knack for putting Maren to sleep this weekend. I am secretly hoping the whole aerospace engineering thing doesn' t work out for her and she can come be our private sleep nanny :)

On Saturday everyone but the Ickler clan went for a hike. Instead, we decided to walk from the house to downtown WP and score some lunch and let Addi play at the playground. We found a great sandwich shop, and Addi had a blast playing with the other kids at the local playground.

On the way there Addi decided that she wanted a piggyback ride . . . my hands were a bit full.

At the park Jack got a bit shivery (despite the warm weather) and I covered him up with Maren's blanket. He got to hitch a ride this way the entire ride home.

Later that night Brian and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary at the WP resort village. We took a fun gondola ride into the village and did some window shopping. We ate at this fun Belgian restaurant -- our first dinner sans Maren -- and had tons of fun talking about all things non-kid related! It was fun and casual, but still romantic.

The next day we went with everyone back to the village and partook in some summer mountain fun . . . aka the alpine slide!!! Addi was absolutely thrilled with the gondola ride into town, she wanted to ride it over and over. The whole morning she was insisting that I be her alpine slide partner, but after the ride to the top of the mountain on the chairlift, she decided that Poppy should ride the slide with her. She had a blast and squealed the whole time!

Here is a video of Addi on the gondola ride -- it is a bit long, but I think the look on her face is adorable.

Later that night we broke out our game of Settlers and battled it out. Poppy won, but only with Maren's help.