31.

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when 31. was put on the list, i truly did not think it would happen. after all, i wrote "(this one's ambitious)". we went to ruidoso, NM - a childhood vacation spot for my family growing up. i learned on this trip that i took a lot of things for granted:

• my parents outfitted 3 children with ski gear, rented skis, fitted us for skis, bought lift tickets, put us in ski school. i am not talking about the financial burden of this, although that is very valid, i am talking about the physical energy required to do all of the above. we only had sofia, i cannot imagine doing this with 3 children.
• ruidoso is a 4 hour drive from where i grew up. it is an 11 hour drive from dallas. (texas is big.)
• my dad always drove us up the STEEP mountain (it's not a ski in/out resort) and back down it. i remember thinking we would die if he made one slight error, going right off the mountain that is not barricaded. an ice storm hit while we were on the mountain, gustavo drove down (mind you he saw snow for the first time when he was 22yo, so driving in snow is not his strong suit) and we passed wreck after wreck after wreck. my dad's advice was just to bump up against snow banks to make your way down. that is what we did.

we bumped into a good friend of mine from high school while intertubing. last year we bumped into her on the streets of san francisco. next year we decided we would go to florida, not tell them, just bump into them on the beach.

i have to hand it to gustavo. he took a lesson and did quite well for a first timer. he just needs practice on getting off the lift. that's all i'm going to say.

sofia, shockingly, loved ski school and skiing. she was very proud of self, and we were quite proud of her too!