1st ski trip

1st ski trip: I’m so tired right now I’m not sure if I can scrape together a few words to describe our 1st family ski trip, but I’ll give it a shot. Things have been kind of slow since we’ve been back in the country for 7 whole days now so I decided to take the kids skiing… no, just kidding! I’ve always looked forward to when we could start taking the kids skiing because I hope that they will grow up feeling that skiing is just a natural thing to do like swimming, or playing catch. I didn’t really learn how to ski until I was 21 and I’ve never taken the time to really get good at it and have always settled for skiing just passably well, but I think that if the kids start early, they’ll be more comfortable with it and be able to enjoy it more. So, we decided that since they are 4 and the “mountain camp” at the local resort accepts children 4 and up, this would be a good year. The next couple of weeks look busy, so we crammed it in this weekend right after our trip and invited our friend Jim and his daughter Angie to join us. Mountain camp is available in half day or whole day increments, so we opted for a half day to see how tired the kids got before subjecting them to a whole day. The resort staff had us sign a release and they took the kids and told us to be back in 4 hours to retrieve them because everything else including getting rental skis, learning to ski, potty and snack breaks, etc is handled by the resort. It felt a little odd to just dump our kids into something about which they were so unfamiliar, but we had to trust that the resort had handled this sort of thing enough times that they knew how to build the kids’ confidence. We’d also talked a great deal about how skiing works and showed our equipment to the kids before we got to the mountain, so they had a little background. We came back almost 45 minutes later and the kids were just finishing gearing up and their class of 8 tots with 2 instructors was heading to the instruction area. The area was so close to flat that the kids had more trouble getting going than they did stopping, and instead of a lift to get the kids up the “hill”, they had a treaded rubber mat for the kids to walk up with their skis on. The next time we stopped by the kids were skiing down the hill and walking back up by themselves. We saw Chloe fall down and have a good deal of trouble getting to her feet, and she still seemed to be having trouble getting going, but when she got to the bottom of the hill I called out to her and waved (we were behind the fence, no spectators allowed in the instruction area), she yelled back “Mom, I’m good at skiing!”. Alex didn’t seem to be having any trouble at all and was doing lap after lap up and down the short run. By the end of the lesson the kids were riding the “magic carpet” which Chloe explained is really a moving walkway with a different name (she’s an expert now since she’s tamed the moving walkways in the airport), and they were doing a little bit of turning and stopping. After the lesson the resort took the kids to their indoor play area in which the kids could warm up and relax while their parents finished skiing their ½ day lift tickets. The twins were more than happy to spend some quality time with their friend Angie. All told it was a great experience for all of us, but I’m still nervous about the dropping off part of the camp. While we were watching our kids ski we noticed another bigger girl who cried as she skied down the hill, and cried on her way back up and cried some more on her next run down. The staff did the best they could to reassure her, but with pre-schoolers falling all around her and piling up, it was all they could do to get the kids back on their feet and send them down the hill again. If one of my kids was that upset I’d prefer they have a way to back out of the program or at least take a break or get a hug or something so they don’t get overly scared about skiing. No pictures today because my card reader isn’t working and I’m too tired to load the driver that will allow me to download the pictures directly from the camera over a cable. So much for a "few" words. Brevity takes effort.