Austria (sorry...LOTS of photos)

Since our good friend Derrek missed all of last ski/snowboard season recovering from this last year. The boys (Derrek, Josh and Brian) havn't stopped talking about hitting the slopes since Derrek got back to Europe earlier this summer. Now that he's moved up to Germany (from Italy) it's much easier to hang out with him since he's only 2 hours away.

Friday night we went out to the Irish Pub of Ansbach to toast our good German friend, Achim Mueller before he left for Afghanistan. We wish him safe travels and hope he comes home soon. It was an early night though because we were set to leave for Austria at 4am on Saturday.


Four AM came way to soon. WAY WAY too soon. I was just glad I wasn't driving. We took Josh's new-to-him BMW 5 series wagon. WAGONS ROCK! The trip down took much longer than expected (thanks to Bossy the GPS), but we made it by around 10:30.

We skied/boarded from 11 until about 2, took a break for beers and a coke and the boys went back out while I got some sun (burned) and took a little nap. The guys were the LAST ones off the slopes for the day - even getting a shovel thrown their way for making one last run. We came off the mountain by 5 pm and headed towards the hotel.

Welcome to Austria! One of the most beautiful places on earth!


I woke up just as the boys were screaming 'PARADE' just in time to catch this one blurry photo:


The boys, Brian, Josh and Derrek






umm...guys...there's no snow...


heading above the clouds:




SNOW! (not a lot, but enough!)


There were lots of small professionals (kids) sking this day - with their fancy gear and coaches in tow - they smoked us all.