And now...spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport… the thrill of victory…
and the agony of defeat…
Our 8th (or 9th? I've lost count...) annual family ski trip over President's Day was terrific, as always. We drove to the Bend, OR vicinity to meet up with John's sister Terri's family and ski at Mt. Bachelor. Last year the drive up was plagued by several hours of questions from Erin about whether we had reached Oregon yet. This year there weren't so many questions until we reached Oregon, and then she wanted to know how many miles (per the GPS) were left in the trip. John took the opportunity to practice multiplication with her. "46 x 3 miles, Erin." "17 x 4 miles." And on it went. At least it took a few minutes for her to calculate each response, and it prevented her from asking again immediately.
The following day we took all the girls to ski school. Erin, a long-time veteran of the sport, got to jump into a group that would be heading up the lifts and onto the big slopes. But this was the first year of skiing for the twins and they certainly were excited.
Terri and Randy stopped by the bunny hill area to see how they were getting along later in the morning and they reported back that they were all smiles and having a blast. Their instructor told Terri that she was amazed that this was their very first day because they were catching on to everything so quickly.
The snow up there was amazing. Tons of it, dry and soft, and though it was foggy and windy up high on the mountain (though fortunately, not at the bottom where ski school took place), we all had a great first day.
The twins helped carry equipment back to the car.
Back at the house the girls hadn't had their fill of snow play yet so we went outside. It was saturday, Valentine's Day, and they even built a snowman:
Going through the day's photos with cousin Andrew:
Sunday was another good day of ski school for Kate and Allison and ski fun for us. We got glowing reports about Allison's skiing, in particular. Erin had a mediocre day at ski school, which was puzzling to me until late that night when she began coughing and didn't sleep well. Obviously, she had been coming down with something and hadn't been feeling well.
So everyone rested the following day and Erin was much improved. For tuesday the twins were ready for ski school day #3 (by request) and Erin asked to ski with us. The video at the beginning of the post is from our last ski day.
Erin's skiing is really very good. She is very cautious and doesn't like to get going to fast and the steeper slopes still make her nervous. But as long as we take it easy, she really enjoys it. She ended the final day wanting to ski more, wanting the trip last longer and asking when we can go skiing again. I'm thrilled that she is enjoying it. By the end of day #3 for the twins Allison was skiing at a "Level 3", meaning she can turn both ways and stop on her own, get up when she falls, and she even skied a little slalom course around and between some cones.
That evening the girls toasted to their successes with hot chocolate with marshmallows and we are all looking forward to our next trip, next month.
