The Kids Learn to Ski

I asked Derek if I could take the kids skiing over their Christmas break and amazingly he agreed.  Derek views skiing as expensive and nothing more.  I have been wanting to take my kids skiing forever, but have been waiting until I felt I could manage brining them all on my own.  It just seems like if you grow up here in Utah with so many great ski resorts in your backyard...you absolutely have to learn to ski.  This was the year.  

We rented skis from Nymans and I put the kids in a half day of ski school at Sundance and then planned to ski with them the other half of the day.  I skied by myself in the morning which was actually fun.  The snow was perfect.  All of them advanced off the bunny hill and were able to ride the ski lift by the end of their half day.  Nonetheless, we were a bit of a circus every time we got on the chair lift.  Me myself alone with 3 first time skiers.  Every time we came to the lift someone didn't make it in time or a ski fell off or something--they always had to stop the lift for us.  The boys taught Liv and I that the thing to do while riding the chair lift was to count all the mardi gras beads in the trees on the way up, so we had fun doing that.  The kids were fearless.  It was exhausting and stressful for me.  I didn't feel like I could stay with all 3 of them, and I sort of felt like I spent the second half of the day putting one or the other of the boys skis back on.  I constantly had the feeling of panic that someone had fallen and were without skis and I didn't know, but everyone on the mountain was super nice to help out.  But, we had a great day skiing together, and the kids couldn't wait to go again.

Derek made us wait a while until we went again though because it really did cost like hundreds of dollars.  March 9th ended up being a teacher work day with no school, so I decided to take the kids again.  They did another half day lesson and then skied with me for a bit before we had to leave to get to rock climbing for the boys and COPA workshops for Liv.  Liv's instructor couldn't believe this was only Liv's second day skiing ever.  The boys significantly improved too.  We were much less of a circus and I rarely had to stop to help the boys get their skis back on.

 Liv even took us all down a blue square.  Carter did great and learned to make wide turns down the mountain, Camden tends to just go straight down and get going too fast and eventually fall.  Another great day, and miraculously they all still had energy for their after skiing activities.  They all love skiing.  Liv is now begging me to put her on the ski team next year.  I am hoping to get us all season pass and season ski rentals to cut down on cost next year.