Poco Mountain Girl

For the third year in a row, we spent Christmas Eve in Winter Park.  Winter Park is a cozy and very cold place to be on Christmas Eve.

We arrived at 2:3o, got a bite to eat, and walked around the shops.  Zia got some rock candy and she and Cash each got a ball from the toy shop.  We took the lift to the ski area, found a wagon, and pulled the kids to where the bonfire was.

It was freezing out but the fire warmed us, then got too warm, and then started spitting sparks everywhere.  It was lots of fun, as long as we could stay somewhere between turning to ice and getting singed.  Brr-ouch-brr-ouch-brr-ouch was the mantra of the evening.

Here we are trying to look normal amidst the fire and ice.  You can see that my teeth are chattering while a cloud of smoke rolls out the top of David’s head.

There was lots of Christmas music playing, and we listened to a group of Charles Dickens carolers.

And sparks. Did I mention the sparks?  Every now and then we would smell someone’s hair burning.  No one actually caught on fire, as far as I know, but I kept putting out burning embers that landed on our blankets.

At the end of the evening there was a fireworks show and a procession of skiers with torches coming down the mountain

followed by lighted snow machines and Santa on skis.

Apart from the torture of freezing and burning, it was lots of fun and left us invigorated and happy.  Happy, especially, to get back to our snug, warm bed–which is where I’m going right now, to snuggle in between the snoring bodies that have already warmed it for me.  Hope you had a nice, cozy Christmas Eve!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 24th, 2013 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Celebrating, Colorado. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.