Motherhood.

I have played basketball for what feels like forever now and with every passing year it becomes that much more difficult to build a women's team. Girls play the same amount (or nearly as many) sports in school as boys do but we get out of school and start down different paths. One such path is motherhood. I believe this is one of the main reasons that I can't build a complete basketball team now that I am 32. Somewhere between trying to change diapers and create healthy meals we lose what we once were. Most aren't bitter by that fact, it is more of just a life change...something that some of us welcome. But it holds true that when little girls dream of big sports they rarely have women athletes past a certain to look up to. Teens and early twenties are easier to find though even they drop off the more dangerous sports early on. Freestyle skiing lost a legend a week ago, Sarah Burke died while training for the X-Games. She was nearly my age and was one of the ones that kept pushing on...I can only imagine how hard it was every year to continue to strap on those skis and compete against young girls that don't wear wedding bands and aren't trying to start a family. The price of failure only multiplies with each thing you gain. I know every weekend as we head up to the mountain I feel sick to my stomach, what if this weekend will be the one where I wreck and can't get up. That's what we are all thinking, all us moms. We strap on our helmets and boards because it is more important to be the role models that my daughters will need to see that life is scary and hard but sometimes if you try really hard you can keep up with the boys.

Our drive up...

The only bad part about snowboarding is in order to get the good snow you have to drive in this...

J's moving

J accepted a job up in Breckenridge so she leaves tomorrow for that. We took our last trip up just the 5 of us yesterday. In the long run the trip up and back are really what you spend most of your day doing, we spend just over 6 hours in the car each weekend...she will be sorely missed not just on the trips but pretty much every weekend.

Here's all of us enjoying new snow....

Teeth & Sisters

Austin completely treats Helen like a sister, in her mind she is an equal. It's funny to watch their dynamics since Austin sees the rest of us as parent figures. Here are all three girls playing with Helen's laptop yesterday afternoon in my office.


Look who's getting teeth! I tried to get a good picture of them but this is as good as it gets. You can barely see the two little teeth poking through on the bottom.

Snowboarding Weekend

We rented a condo with some friends this weekend and a couple of them did not ski or snowboard so I managed to ditch out each day with the boys for a bit and take some runs while they watched the girls. It was crazy to be able to snowboard 3 days in a row, now my legs feel like Jello! Austin had fun with the other kids and Lil' Bit just likes watching her big sister.

Last Weekend

We literally mobbed the mountain last weekend, we headed up to Breckenridge with a team of 20 people and road what was the first official powder day of the year, I still can't wipe the smile off my face. And for the first time ever we were 5 girls strong, all of which were snowboarders...that has NEVER happened. Snowboarding is definitely a male dominated sport so to have 25% of our group female was a huge success. Here's four of us that couldn't stop smiling.

Joe Snowboarding.

Yes this is how fast Joe actually goes and how fast I have to try and go to keep up with him.

Joe in the park

Here's Joe and Nate in the park. Doing freaking awesome!

Helmet Cam

Helen got Joe a helmet camera for his birthday/Christmas so we have been having fun taking videos of our snowboarding outings. Well I say we have had fun but what I mean is Helen is using it as a learning tool and Joe is having fun while I cannot believe how much slower I ride than the boys coupled with the fact that I say the same 4 sayings 900 times a day. Needless to say I spent all day Sunday scaring the hell out of myself trying to keep up with the boys and falling a lot but I am refusing to be "the slow one" in the group anymore. Here are some videos that we took of two weekends ago.

Helen taking some turns first thing in the morning. She is already improving a ton and spent all day yesterday on the blues with us. (Green = easiest, Blue = Intermediate, Black = Most Difficult).