the history and science and math books are on the shelf, the portfolio for the fourth grader’s year has been sent away along with the affadavit for next school year. what does this mean? well, duh. it’s summer vacation!

the past few years, our family has taken a long trip in the spring, sometimes 3-4 weeks, but one time we went for 6. anyway, taking approximately 2 months off in the spring means that summertime needs to include school. so throughout the past few summers, we have done school about 3 days a week. i love this flexibility that homeschooling affords us.

but this year, our vacation didn’t happen in the spring. in fact, it’s happening now. we morph into a family who has an actual summer vacation. we are in steamboat springs, colorado with my whole immediate family. my sisters, their husbands, their kids, our parents. we are staying in this crazy huge chalet (no, not a cabin for us, people) that sleeps all 20 of us!

it’s right on the side of whatever mountain, within walking distance from the ski lifts. well, we can’t ski, but who needs to ski? brian and i have been on one exploratory run from the front door and found an awesome hiking/running trail that goes on and on forever back down into town. i don’t know that we (read: i, because i have no stamina running) have it in us at this altitude to try the whole thing, down and up, but it’s a compelling thought.

with the rest of the family, we so far have flung ourselves down an alpine slide (which i, ahem, fell off of because i was going sooooo fast) and a short less flingy hike up to lower fish creek falls. really lovely. i think we’ll all try to get up to the upper falls sometime this week, but we want another day or two to acclimate first. hiking in colorado is just so pretty, even when you’re just doing the short touristy stuff…. and it’s affordable.

Posted on July 1st, 2013