kids | Little Traveling Seeds

There is something to be said for tradition when it comes to the family trip. As a child, most of my family’s summer vacations were spent either in New Braunfels, Texas or at the Coca Cola Camp on Lake Bruin in Louisiana.

Typically, we’d go with five or six other families to New Braunfels for the Fourth of July. We always stayed in a little area called The Other Place, an oval cul-de-sac of houses and condos surrounding a grassy median with playground equipment, picnic tables and barbecues. We’d float the river in inner tubes, cook out, play horseshoes, watch fireworks and the Wimbledon finals, nearly drown at the Schlitterbahn water slide and generally run barefoot and wild with hordes of other kids while our parents played tennis and drank wine coolers. It was great.

Coca Cola Camp was very similar, only we’d join my Dad’s four sisters and their families in a giant screened-in house for a week of family fun. Shout out to the Coodys! My Uncle Robert worked for Coke, and through some generous arrangement completely unbeknownst and beside the point to me, my sisters and I got to spend several glorious days with our aunts, uncles, 11 cousins and miscellaneous tagalongs. We’d hang out on the dock, waiting with fear and excitement for Uncle Robert to hurl us into the lake. We also fished for gar, made cheese dip, helped ourselves to an endless supply of Cokes and played Monopoly into the wee hours while our parents drank beer. It was great.

Being European and all, Jasper’s family trips were a little different from ours. Ski holidays in the Austrian Alps and “camping” vacations on the French Riviera were a far cry from La-Tex lakes and rivers, but my sense is their trips had many of the same components ours did. Really, white trash really isn’t so far removed from Euro trash, but that’s a post for a different day.

My little family is very lucky to have a generous friend who lets us use his condo in Crested Butte, Colorado, so our tradition happens to be in the most beautiful mountain town in the world. Seriously, I challenge you to find one that’s any lovelier. The first time we went to CB, it was summertime and Stella was two years old. We recently got back from our fourth winter trip, and I still love the whole package…Jasper’s infectious enthusiasm for skiing, spending hours in front of the fire, soaking in pristine landscapes and clean air, making memories with friends, and doing things that are slightly out of my comfort zone. There’s nothing like 12 degree temps and an accidental encounter with a scary slope to make you feel alive!

Most of all, though, it’s a thrill to watch Stella enjoy the mountains. I don’t know if it’s possible to feel nostalgic for the moment you are in, but the slightly tweaked deja vu sensation you feel watching your child experience the same thing year after year triggers something like it.

If you go to Crested Butte four years in a row…

: You will realize that investing in ski school for a three year old is a waste when your daughter says the best part of her day was eating pizza and wearing a green vest.

: And yet, you will make the same mistake again the next year. Even though the instructors will teach your child to make “pizza and French fries,” she will spend the next twelve months saying she only wants to ski with Papa and never wants to go to ski school again. Seriously, she’ll say it all the time.

: You’ll finally smarten up when she turns five and simply take her skiing with you. In addition to saving a good chunk of change, your child will have the time of her life, and you’ll be all googly-eyed over your stud muffin husband.

: You’ll learn that a two year old has fun making a snowman for approximately six minutes, at which point her gloves have fallen off and snow is caked in her boots.

: But you’ll finish building it anyway and take the flipping picture whether or not she’s ready to go inside for hot chocolate.

: A few years later, your girl will be able to build the snowman, put on her own gloves and find sticks to make the arms. Rather than fighting the obligatory picture, she’ll sweetly humor her buffoonish parents.

: You won’t know it at the time, but this soon-to-be-classic photo will capture the first of many trips to the Magic Meadows yurt for brunch with good friends.

: You also won’t imagine that while the little ones need help making the two-mile loop now…

: Pretty soon they’ll have the chutzpah and energy to make it on their own.

: You will be glad these two little pookies…

: are still buddies three years later.

: The fun of meeting the precious son of your Colorado-dwelling childhood friend will turn to mortification when your own rat-fink offspring completely disses him.

: You will be reminded of the many compromises one must make in marriage when you spend the morning skiing on slopes well above your comfort zone while your husband spends that same morning skiing on slopes far beneath his.

: You’ll enjoy the three year old version of apres ski…

: Almost as much as the 39-year-old version.

: You will learn that bungee jumping in the kid zone…

: is not just for kids.

: You’ll weigh the pros and cons of living in this beautiful village year round. Then you’ll look at home prices in the real estate guide and decide the long winter would be just miserable.

: You will make your mark on the best pizza joint on the planet, probably reinforcing nasty stereotypes about Texans and people with kids.

: You will wish you got to see friends like these more than a few times a year.

: Your friend will go to three coffee shops looking for the perfect souvenir mug only to discover weeks later that she chose poorly.

: Surprisingly, you’ll enjoy much of the 14-hour drive to Colorado that is both beautiful (in a Stephen King/Children of the Corn kind of way)…

: and terrifying (in a Stephen King/Misery kind of way).

: While you’ll take excessive pride in being the go-to person for starting the daily fire, somewhere in the depths of your being you’ll know everyone else just pretends to be inept so they don’t have to do it.