It’s taken over a month to post (been enjoying the good life back home a little too much!) but here is what we got up to at the end of our trip. Our last 10 days of our year long adventure were spent in great contrast.  Having departed the summer and 32 degrees of Costa Rica we arrived into the cold winter and -2 of Denver, Colorado.  We got the best news ever on the flight when told that it would be 1 hour quicker than anticipated. Well, I never! As people who generally love the sun we decided if we were going to do any ‘cold’ along the way, we should do it properly. Colorado offered us that. I tried to play tough guy and don the shorts the first night. My man bits quickly inverted so I switched to pants.

We touched down and quickly put on the only warm clothes we had.  We’ve chased the summer the whole year so to say we were a little unprepared was like saying Tiger Woods might enjoy the company of ladies.

Loaded up into our hire car we headed for the late-night ski rental store that had stayed open for us.  We picked up and snow clothes and boots and headed for the hills. We watched the temperature on our car thermostat drop with every mile, and we saw our first dusting of snow fall lit by our headlights in the dark.  1 ½ hours later we arrived into the picturesque snow covered town of Keystone, our home for the next 5 days.  Now the girls will proudly tell you that they’ve never seen snow before (apart from in the movie Frozen).  They were both asleep by the time we arrived although Piper briefly opened her eyes getting out of the car, smiled, said the word ‘snow’ and went back to sleep.

Dad (that’s me) needed to do a late-night run to Walmart as the next day would be ‘Evie The Greats’ 3^rd birthday.

Evie had been waiting for this day for over a year I would say (although her preference had been to turn 5, she had to settle for 3).  She was proud she was now 3 and now constantly refers to any time before she was 3 as when she was a bubba.

We opened presents (including a couple buried in the snow for her to find) ate pancakes and then hit the snow.  If I’m being honest I’d say the girls took about 3 days to get use to the cold of the snow (one day we had a high of -11 and a low of -21…yes that is Celsius). It took us 20 minutes just to get dressed with ski clothes, gloves, boots and beanies. Evie looked like the mini Michelin man in her gear and Piper wouldn’t heed warning not to touch the snow with bare hands (it would then take her 2 hours to recover!).

Hot chocolates were the order of the day, every day.  A couple days in we had a massive dump and awoke to snow everywhere.  More snow than a stockbrokers Christmas party.  It was quite amazing. We’d wake in the mornings with the car covered in a thick layer the fluffy white goodness. Whilst driving I think walkers passed me  as I cruised (if you could call it that) at about 5km/hr on the white roads.

We spent the next couple days, tubing, having snowball fights and eating snow off trees. We even spent half an hour in the outdoor hot tub with snow while the snow was falling (I probably said ‘it must be some kind of hot tub time machine’ about 40 times, each time to no laughs whatsoever). Being in the water was fun, getting out and walking through the snow barefoot not as much fun. At night, we would tuck up in our luxury condo in front of the fire.  We  managed an afternoon at the movies…to see Trolls obviously! The local supermarket even had a sale on ice (I kid you not). I wanted to stand there and undercut them selling bags of snow but I was too cold! Fun, fun times in a beautiful part of the world.

From Colorado, we headed back to LA for the last few days of our adventure.  We spilt our time in LA by staying with a couple friends.  Constance ( a good friend of Ez’s family) hosted us for a couple days down at Redondo Beach.  The girls loved decorating the Christmas tree and being waited on hand and foot by Constance.  We even managed to squeeze in a little shopping.  We then headed over to stay with friends Nicole, Rohan and little Zelle for a couple days in their beautiful Hollywood home. Here we explored Hollywood boulevard, sunset boulevard, the Hollywood hills, Hollywood sign as well as making a last stop at Shake Shack for the year. We even managed to get through a little bit of shoe shopping.  1 hour later we would have made Imelda Marcos proud as we left with 8 pairs.

It was then time to pack our bags and get ready for the airport for the journey home.  Approximately 20 hours later we arrived to a hero’s welcome in Sydney.  I felt like Ian Thorpe returning from an Olympics. There were tears, hugs, kisses (that was just Ez) and signs as we were greeted by family and friends.  It was cool.  And just like that….it was over.  No longer were we worldly adventurers.  We became an unemployed family from Sydney although we have a pretty cool story to tell.

I’ll wrap up our year in the next post…. which will probably be the last for a while

For more snowy pictures in Colorado, check out Ez’s gallery here