My kids had this Monday off school (for Eid al Fitr — a new thing for our school district this year). So we decided to do a long weekend trip to Park City, Utah for skiing. My husband had taken our younger kids there twice (when I took the three older kids to the UK in late 2022, and then when I took the two older boys to Spain over spring break in 2024), and knew that it was a relatively doable trip. There’s a direct flight from PHL to SLC, and then Canyons Village is only about 35 minutes from the airport. We stayed at a resort that was right by the slopes. Going in late March it wouldn’t be too crowded. Nor would it be that cold! But there would still be snow, so it worked.
The trip went pretty well as family trips go (even if it did feel like a quick turnaround after Barcelona — but the kids hadn’t been on that, so it didn’t feel that way for them). It started a little rough. We left on Friday afternoon after school and got on a 6:55 p.m. flight. This meant we landed just a few minutes before 10 p.m. Mountain time, but that was midnight for us. The 5-year-old started crying at about 10:30 p.m. our time that he just wanted to be in his bed. Eventually I got him to fall asleep on me, though I wound up feeling pretty queasy on that flight too (something I ate I think). No one was in good shape when we got off. I went to the bathroom and sent everyone on with my carry-on to go wait for the bags we’d checked (with ski helmets/etc.). I was carrying the 5-year-old’s backpack, so I didn’t notice that I didn’t have two bags with me when we left the baggage claim (because I did have two bags…just not mine) and the child who’d been assigned to carry my bag to the baggage claim decided that it was my turn after we got there but with no official hand-off, and then no one counted bags as we were discombobulated and getting in the rental car.
Net result: As we were checking in at the resort, my phone rang with a Salt Lake City number. I picked it up and heard a cheerful voice saying “Laura! Did you leave your bag at the airport?”
Yep, we’d left it sitting there by the baggage claim (fortunately well labeled with my name and phone number!). I was pretty much despondent at this point, but after we got into the room my husband got back in the car, drove back to the airport, got my bag, and came back at 1 a.m. Mountain time, or about 3 a.m. our time. Quite the night!
The good news with the time difference is that, despite the short night, we were able to get up in the morning pretty easily. My husband and I took the 5-year-old down to the ski rental place, got him set up, and then checked him in for his first day of ski school. This is one of the major highlights of a ski vacation. A lot of resorts have daycare for very young children and then by age 4-5 the kids can take lessons, so the adults and older children can go ski on more challenging slopes. I don’t ski, but this is how my husband was able to take our little guy on these trips by himself and actually get to do any serious skiing.
We got the rest of the kids in their gear and off to the slopes…and then I enjoyed a few hours to myself. Both days! I went to the gym, I worked, I took myself out to lunch at this little Japanese place for ramen, and then picked up the 5-year-old at 3 p.m. He did so well! Over the course of the two days he got promoted to the “Blue” group, whatever that means, but he’s definitely getting better. My husband mostly skied with the older kids (the 15-year-old did snowboarding) though they left the mountain at various points as they had phones/room keys/etc.
Then in the evenings we’d go to the resort’s restaurant, which had pub fare and giant milkshakes, and the little guys would go play in the resort game room. Our balcony had a hot tub, so we made it in there both nights too. We don’t do so many things with all 7 of us anymore, so it was kind of nice to be forced into togetherness for a bit!
It was a short trip, just two days of skiing, and we headed back on Monday. The way back is shorter (only a 3h 40m flight) but it was so, so bumpy I was counting minutes for a lot of it. As we approached Philadelphia (which had a major storm system coming in) the plane actually lurched. Like, people screamed and flew up from their seats — good thing we were wearing seat belts. So I was glad to get on the ground, get our bags (we counted this time) and get everyone else in the van. Then I got in a cab to go to my choir rehearsal downtown, arriving just in time. It seems Philadelphia was about 75 degrees this past weekend, so no more Pocono skiing this year.
It was a lot of running around for the weekend, but the mountains were so beautiful. A little hard getting everyone back on eastern time but we are surviving.
Photo: View in the other direction from the ski slopes. The ski slopes themselves had a lot more snow…
Sounds like a fun trip (minus the luggage fiasco!!) 😊 We did a family trip to Park City recently and it was wonderful. I think we’ll spend the extra $$ to just do a direct flight like you did. We live near DC so this isn’t an issue but I was feeling cheap when I booked the tickets. I have to sometimes convince myself my time is not free!
My husband and I have also realized that it’s such a great family activity. Now that my boys are getting older we’re finding it’s harder to do things as a family between sports schedules and/or doing something everyone thinks is fun. As much as babies and toddlers can be challenging, I could kind of do whatever cute outing I wanted to do with the family back then!
This topic would be a great podcast episode, I think 😊
@Sara – oh yes, direct flight always. If there aren’t direct flights from PHL we drive to EWR to get one. Once we went to JFK to get a direct flight (that wasn’t my favorite…so we tend to choose destinations with direct flights from one of our airports). There are very few things that are “fun for the whole family” – but skiing might be one. A good podcast topic for sure!
Oooh hi! 👋 I live in SLC, so it’s fun to see that you were in my neck of the woods. March is a great time to go skiing!
@Lizzy – it was pretty! Glad I could visit your neck of the woods.
Hi Laura! For a while now I have been time tracking (thanks to you I truly LOVE time tracking.) My intentions are to review the logs every week for a month (so 4-5 review sessions) and I am finding extreme resistance to doing so. I can’t say that I don’t love the reviewing of the time log because I have never actually tried it. Every week I’m like well this week I’m not reviewing because ___, ___, and ____ happened so it’s pointless (the drama is real). This could be a whole counseling session….. Do you have a weekly time tracking review process (maybe a series of questions or something) that is simple and beneficial? Thanks for any help or insight here!
@Ali C- ooh, fascinating. Mostly the resistance people have is to creating the log, not reviewing it! But I think you could just treat it as a source of curiosity. If the week feels different from normal for some reason, why was that? What do you think of as normal? What did you like most about the week? What was the highlight? What would you like to spend more time doing? Those questions tend to be more positive than any sort of hunt for wasted time or the like.
OMG! We did the exact same thing with luggage skiing in MT this winter. We’re on EST at home and landed 12:30 am mountain time. My husband checked his boot bag, but the rest of us carried our on. Didn’t occur to anyone that we didn’t pick his up at baggage claim, too tired and focused on getting skis, rental car etc. They called us as soon as we checked into our room. I almost didn’t answer the call, thinking who would be calling that late at night! Thank goodness for kind airport workers who are paying attention! Glad you had a good weekend and arrived home safe.
@Hilary – it’s so easy for it to happen! And yes, I’m glad they called me. It would have been something to figure out on my own…