{"id":2448899,"date":"2019-09-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=313087"},"modified":"2019-09-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T06:00:00","slug":"aspen-princess-from-the-mountain-top-through-a-few-valleys-and-back-eight-years-of-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-princess-from-the-mountain-top-through-a-few-valleys-and-back-eight-years-of-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Princess: From the mountain top, through a few valleys and back, eight years of great"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Eight years ago today, at high noon on top of Aspen Mountain, I married Ryan in a ceremony that was truly fit for a princess. I promised to love him \u201cin powder and in ice\u201d and \u201cwith Highland Bowl as our witness.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should have cost at least double what we paid for it, but therein lies the most beautiful thing about living in Aspen \u2014 people really do take care of each other. If ever there was an appropriate time to cash in on the old \u201cski bum currency,\u201d this was it.<\/p>\n

I originally imagined our wedding would be a very laid back, mountain-style affair. I thought I\u2019d wear a short dress with cowboy boots, a crown of fresh flowers in my hair. I imagined a backyard wedding with Mexican food, a bluegrass band, and kegs of really good beer.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how we went from tins of black beans and burritos to a plated luncheon at the Aspen Mountain Club; from dusty boots to Christian Dior silk stilettos; from a short dress to a Claire Pettibone gown; or a flower crown to hair extensions, but that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll buy one shoe and you buy the other,\u201d my mom suggested when we saw those little pieces of art for your feet in the store window, perched on a glass pedestal something out of an Aspen fairytale. With all those zeroes, it was the only way we could justify the price.<\/p>\n

I still have those shoes, sitting on top of a shelf in my closet where I can look at them every day. I have often thought of having a special shadow box made so I could hang them on the wall like art. Every year, I wear them on our anniversary, even under jeans, even if we are in Moab, or Silverton, or wherever our anniversary trip takes us.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, we haven\u2019t been on one of those trips since Levi was born. Hell, we can\u2019t even find a babysitter to watch him so we can go out to dinner alone. He\u2019ll come along with us, and it will be a family affair as most everything is these days. Thank god Tempernillo has a playground for us desperate midvalley parents to allow us to spend our money on a halfway decent meal instead of a babysitter.<\/p>\n

A lot has changed in eight years. We moved downvalley, bought a house, had a baby. Ryan got a big job, I became a mother who works part time.<\/p>\n

We love being parents and experiencing the world through his eyes has given us the chance to slow down, enjoy the moment and appreciate the small stuff: an afternoon at the park, a walk along the river, a short bike ride along the Rio Grande Trail, time at the pool and the stillness of the house during naps. Best of all, getting out on the mountain to ski with a young child is like going back in time and doing it all over again. The discovery, the excitement, and the joy aren\u2019t dependent on 6 inches of fresh snow but the first time riding a real chairlift; the sound of your child\u2019s shrieks and giggles as he feels the pull of gravity; the moment you know they understand why this life is so important to you and why you have built your life around this, and his life for this.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also had some hard times. Ryan\u2019s beloved German Shepherd George died from Leukemia on Halloween in 2012. We lost our first pregnancy in 2014 and went through two more rounds of fertility treatments before we finally got pregnant with Levi in 2015. Ryan changed jobs, going from his beloved Maintenance Man of the Century position at Centennial to managing a T-shirt print shop in Carbondale for a friend, to working for property management and landscaping companies that meant crazy hours and crappy pay until he finally landed his dream job at Colorado Rocky Mountain School. There, he can do the kind of work he loves, which means a little bit of everything, but still be a part of a community. He takes his role as Director of Building and Grounds as seriously as if he were CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Thank god one of us is a hard worker.<\/p>\n

Then we lost our beloved Gertie, the pug I am not supposed to write about, but you have all heard that story too many times already.<\/p>\n

That said, I don\u2019t know what people are talking about when they say marriage is hard, or that marriage takes work. I don\u2019t know what this \u201cseven-year itch\u201d is supposed to mean. My marriage is what makes the hard things easier. It\u2019s the only relationship in my life that doesn\u2019t take work. If there is an itch, Ryan is the one who scratches it. If anything, time has flown by, evidenced by the wrinkles around our eyes and the flecks of gray in our scalps and the softness around our bellies (OK, so that was always there, but you know what I mean).<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why or how I was able to find this man. Maybe it\u2019s because we married later in life and we were wiser, more comfortable in our skin, and truly ready to settle down. Maybe it\u2019s because both of our sets of parents are still married after 50 years and set the perfect example for what a long-lasting love is. Maybe it\u2019s because there is such a thing as love at first sight and love that was meant-to-be and the forces of the universe can bring two people together. Maybe we do have more than one lifetime and relive our relationships in different forms over and over until we get it right.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019re getting this one right. And if we\u2019re not, we have the rest our lives to work on it.<\/p>\n

The Princess is thinking about getting her eyelids done. Send your referrals to alisonmargo@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eight years ago today, at high noon on top of Aspen Mountain, I married Ryan in a ceremony that was truly fit for a princess. I promised to love him \u201cin powder and in ice\u201d and \u201cwith Highland Bowl as our witness.\u201d It should have cost at least double what we paid for it, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 23:40:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}