More Ski Mom

Today the Powers that Be declared it a snow day. I worked through the morning, then tossed the kids into the car and headed over to the ski place so the kids could have some fun in the freshly fallen snow. In the short ski season that is Central PA, the kids can now use their school ski passes any day of the way--they just can't have a lesson unless it's actually 4 or 5 pm. Well, we were having the missionaries over for dinner, which meant the later hours weren't going to work for skiing . . . and since on Monday the boys had managed to successfully get on and off the ski lift without any bodily harm (just once, but once counts) . . . I figured, what the heck, we'll try it without the lesson. Just Ben, Milo, a biiiiiigggg gentle ski slope, and a death trap of a ski lift. No problem.

And it wasn't. Ben DID scare ten years off my life the first time up the ski lift. I won't go into details just in case child protective services reads the blog, but I was right there on the ground under the chair and I yelled, "Stop! Stop! Ben, don't worry about it. Just sit back in the chair and hold still!" And God bless the little bugger, he did. So it was good. And NEXT time he went up, the guy at the bottom who helps the little guys get on the ski chair DID REMEMBER to help Ben put the safety bar down first. God bless HIM, too.

But after that he was great on the ski lift and so was Milo and since it wasn't in the budget for me to get a lift ticket and rental, too, I walked UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN the side of the hill, mostly just coaching whomever was in the down position on how to move their skis around perpendicular to the hill to get up on their own. And then . . . I didn't have to do that anymore either. So I stood at the top of the hill and believed them when they sailed by saying, "Just one more time!" until it became clear that they were maybe NEVER going to run out of steam. They HAD it and skiing had THEM and they were happy little masters of Little Bear and Little Bear chair lift. I tried to get video, but I don't think you can really seen anything. The weather wasn't perfect. It kept sleeting for brief periods of time. The twins have goggles, thanks to Gramma Gaye, so the weather didn't phase them at all. I was getting pretty cold though.

Eventually I did have to pull them off the hill. They'd been skiing for about two hours straight. They would have kept going, I think, until they collapsed into little kindergartner heaps. But I was freezing, so we turned in their skis and they gleefully reported their success to Jon-the-ski-rental-guy (who always tells them they're "the coolest twins on skis," which makes him real popular with the twinks).

Meanwhile, Max and Brian came sniffing around for lunch, and I had a bunch of meal tickets to use up, so we all ate lunch (okay, the kids all INHALED lunch. I ate.) and then packed up and went home. We didn't get a full three hours of skiing this time (normally we do, but we didn't get there till 12:10 and the lift tickets were only good 12:00 to 3:00 and it probably took us a good 15 minutes to get out on the snow, so by the time we were done with lunch, we were done).

Max's last Saturday ski school is tomorrow and then I don't know if we'll make it back out on the hill one more time before all the snow is gone or not. Max has a season pass and we'll try to get out more than once before all the snow is gone, but the twins have to wait until I get paid and I can't say today exactly when that will be. I do hope to get them one more good afternoon on skis, though.

It's been a good little ski season for us this year. Totally worth it.