Out With 2004, In With 2005

I am back from Park City after a week of skiing with friends and family. The snow was great and the family fun even better. It warms my heart to see the next generation skiing and playing together. You know they are having a good time when all 12 kids are sitting at a dinner table grinning at each other! And then they tear off en masse to go sledding. As for the older generation, it was wonderful to spend a week with my sisters on a ski vacation after a 30-year hiatus of ski trips. We grew up together with friends and family on ski vacations in Colorado since we were in elementary school. They were the most memorable times I ever spent with my family. (We are still trying to confirm that Polly was at the "Crystal Palace" in Aspen in 1967 at the same night that my sisters and I were there, when her cousin Peter and my cousin George got into major trouble by flinging butter pads on the ceiling with their napkins. We both have the same memories of a wild evening there, this long before we would run into each other 30 years later and be married. The parents were downstairs in the front row while the kids were at a very large table upstairs. At one point, all fifteen kids in unison began making our water glasses sing by rubbing our fingers around the rim. We stopped the cabaret show that night. Our waiter was really pissed! Thirty-seven years later I can still see him running up the stairs, screaming at us, "Stop It! Just Stop It!")

On New Year's Eve this year at "Windy Ridge", all the kids tried to get their water glasses to sing until the parents stopped them. This time the parents and children were at the same table, as times have changed, and there was no show or pissed-off waiter. And then the kids found the helium balloons. Everyone was laughing in tears as each one took a huge breath of helium and then squeaked forth something inane. The refrain from "The Wizard of Oz" in very high "C" got everyone rolling. "We represent the Lollipop Kids, the Lollipop Kids, the Lollipop Kids ... we represent the Lollipop Kiiiiiids, and we do welcome you to Munchkin Land". I didn't even know that my kids watched this movie, as they seem fixated by the likes of "Mortal Combat" and "Harry Potter". Finally, the children implored the parents to play the helium game although the results were anti-climatic. I believe that everyone there at that table, from 10 years old to 50 plus, will remember this evening for a very long time, as Polly and I remember the dinner at the "Crystal Palace" in Aspen 37 years ago.

And so we pass it on to the next generation.

Happy New Year!