2nd ski trip

.Friday Feb 15 I took the kids for their 2nd lesson. It was my first time taking the kids without Casey to help. They've been pretty tired all week still recovering from their cold of last week, but I thought they were well enough by Friday. I dropped them at the lesson and left for a while. When I came back Alex's goggles were half way over his eyes so I called to him to move them (parent's aren't allowed inside the fenced lesson area). He came over to the fence and his eyelashes were wet and his cheeks and eyes red from crying. The teacher hollered over to us "I wish you hadn't come back, we'd just got him around the corner and he was starting to do well". Alex gave me a big smile and the teacher called "Bye Mom!" so I told Alex I had to go for a whileHe willingly rejoined the class but I was very worried since I had no idea what he had been crying about or if he was still just too tired for this much activity. I watched from a more anonymous viewpoint and Alex was doing ok, so I left again. When I came back the classes had shuffled and Alex and Chloe were with a new teacher. One of the original teachers hollered over that Alex had been doing well and hadn’t had any more problems.
I watched from a distance and Chloe was going like gangbusters. Many of the kids were waiting for the teachers to tell them when to go down the slope but Chloe just went up and down the slope as many times as she could. At one point she fell down and stood herself back up without help (most of the other kids required help to stand up after a fall since their skis kept slipping back out from under them as they tried to stand). Alex, on the other hand, would not go down the slope at all unless the teacher went right next to him. This new teacher was very patient and very enthusiastic, but Alex had his mind made up, and he wouldn’t do it unless it was his way. The 1st time skiing Alex skied just like Chloe was doing this time, as many runs as he could with no one helping him. When I picked them up after class I picked Alex up and gave him a big squeeze. He just hung limp in my arms. Both kids were sweating (it ended up being 48F that day!) so we opened our jackets, took off our hats and sat in the snow to cool off.
Both kids said they had a good time skiing and wanted to come back next week, and both kids said they wanted to ride the chair lift (the lesson had only used the magic carpet). I explained that if we rode the chair lift up we’d have to ski back down so Alex changed his mind and decided that he didn’t want to. As we sat in the snow Alex perked back up and eventually decided that he did want to ride chair lift and ski down as long as I held his hand. The lift operator slowed the lift down and lifted Chloe into the chair as I lifted Alex. During the ride up the kids were very excited and didn’t mention at all being afraid of the height (I was afraid of the height my first time riding a chair lift in high school). When we got to the top I held firmly onto the arm of each child and we skied off the lift without creating a pile up! It took us a while to get the hang of skiing down together without getting our 6 skis all tangled up and the kids hung on me quite a bit, but we skied all the way down the big bunny slope together and then had celebratory doughnuts and Gatorade! The pictures with the triangle at the bottom are the first frame of videos. Press the arrow to start. The close up pictures of Alex and Chloe are while riding the lift. The picture of both of them together is at the top of the bunny slope, you can see the lift running down the hill behind them. It turns out it was my fault Alex was upset at the beginning of class. He didn’t know I was leaving before I left. I usually am very careful about such things because I know Alex is only comfortable if he knows what is going to happen before it happens. At least he does want to go back next week, so he isn’t too traumatized.