Erin needed some new sneakers. At the shoe store she chose some pretty conventional (for her) white with pink sparkly accents New Balance tennies. So, fine. Mission accomplished. Then she saw the assortment of more retro canvas shoes over to one side. "They have Chuck Taylors! Can I get some?" Once and a while my girls surprise me.
Erin knows Chuck Taylors because she's already had two pairs, the more recent of which was still her in closet, though they didn't fit her anymore. Her first pair was spotted by her in a store about a year and a half ago. She saw them, she wanted them. My girly, girly, girly girl, who draws nothing but butterflies and hearts and rainbows and ponies and shining happy people holding hands, who loves dresses and bows and glitter and magic wands and plastic high heel shoes for playing dress up, wanted some rather boyish plain Chuck Taylors.
If I had wanted Chuck Taylors as a kid my mom's head would have exploded, because it nearly did with all clothing I picked out. I never liked what she wanted me to like. I was the anti-pink/sparkly/hearts/rainbows/princess/anything girly girl, much to her frustration. Unlike nearly everything they pick out in a store to wear, Chuck Taylors would have been right up my alley. I very happily bought them for Erin.
"They come in pink," I advised her, guessing this would surely be the color of choice. "I want BLACK," she answered, "or maybe dark brown." "Dark brown?" "OH! They have dark blue! THAT'S the pair I want!"
So dark blue it was, and she wore those things into the ground. Her second pair was dark blue too, and so was her choice for her newest acquisition. When we got home I inspected the pair in her closet and decided they had a lot more wear left in them and they would fit Allison now. But I didn't think Allison, who is as much a fan of all things uber-girly as Erin is, would agree to wear them. Wow, was I wrong. She was THRILLED to realize these could be hers and she's been wearing them nonstop ever since. And fortunately for my mom, she finally has some girls to shop for who will actually wear the girly things she picks out for them.
February and President's Day break week at school means skiing with John's sister Terri's family. This year's trip was our ninth annual. Except for a couple of years after the twins were born, each year the destination has been Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon.
As usual, we viewed skiing education as more important than conventional education and we had the girls ditch school on the friday before the break. I advised their teachers of our irresponsible plan about a week ahead of time. "Are you just gonna call them in sick on the friday?" another parent/friend at school asked me. "No, I already told the teachers the girls wouldn't be there." "What story did you tell them?" "I told them they would be ditching school to go skiing." (surprised expression) "What did they say?" "They said to make sure they make a snowman and send them a postcard." I like my kids' teachers. Tim (sophomore in college, left) brought a friend along with him this year. Grady was the only one in our group who snowboards, but we hung out with him anyway. The weather was interesting. It wasn't too cold, but it was intermittently very foggy every day and it was lightly snowing or sleeting off and on each day too. The clouds were on the move so we could go from clear conditions to pretty low visibility within a few feet on the slope. Nephew Andrew and his girlfriend, Jean: Tim coming down after a jump: The girls spent saturday and sunday in ski school so I don't have pictures of them skiing those days. John and I spent saturday and sunday alternating between skiing with Tim and Grady, who were the most aggressive and mostly stuck to the more adventurous areas on the backside of the mountain, and skiing with Terri and Andrew and Jean on the intermediate areas on the front side.
The girls' ski teachers had good things to report for all of them each afternoon and the girls said they had a great time. Erin was skiing on lots of blues (intermediates), Kate and Allison had a great time and were riding the chair lifts and skiing all around the mountain also. After ski school the girls had fun climbing and sliding on the big snow hills at the bottom of the mountain. Back at the rental house our tired legs enjoyed the hot tub out on the back deck and lounging around and watching the olympics in the evenings.
And for some reason the girls were often on laps and horizontal, Although sometimes people were horizontal on the slopes as well. On the right is Tim's 3/4 "yard sale" that I was fortunate to have captured: On sunday night John and I concluded that after two full days of skiing the twins could probably use a day off. Erin advised us that she wanted to ski again, and I said we'd discuss it again in the morning. In the morning she was raring to go, so she and I and Terri, Andrew, and Jean headed out for more skiing while John and Randy and the twins stayed at the house for a "snow play day". Tim and Grady had to get back to college after skiing on sunday night. I was anxious to see how Erin's skiing was coming along so we headed for some intermediate slopes and she did fantastically well. Last season, she skied maybe 2 or 3 intermediate runs in a row but then became tired and we needed to go back to the beginner areas. On monday we skied only intermediate runs, all day long.
The weather was clearer so the resort opened the chair lift to the mountain summit, which had been closed because of the wind all weekend. In fact, that lift was closed during our entire trip last year too, so when Andrew noticed it was open we decided to take the opportunity to go to the top. There are mostly expert runs coming down from the summit, but we knew there are some intermediate ones also and we chose one of those. Erin started out skiing fine but it was really windy up there and it blew the snow on the surface around so that the whole place looked like the ground was covered in fog from dry ice. She didn't like the high winds and became a little too nervous and wasn't enjoying herself anymore.
But she got down the slope just fine and then we went in for a break and lunch. Afterwards, she asked to ski on the back side of the mountain, which has longer slopes and is overall more challenging that the front side. I warned about this, but she was intent on going. About half way down the first slope we tried we encountered a field of moguls--huge bumps in the snow and no way around them. Aunt Terri wasn't too thrilled to see them either. I gave Erin some tips about getting through them and I went and she followed and afterwards she asked me, "WHY are there moguls here?" "That's just what happens with the snow where they don't groom the slope. I'm sorry, I didn't know they were here." "I LOVE them!" she exclaimed. "WHAT?" I said. "Can we find more?" "Um....sure!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing because I LOVE moguls too. We found more:
On tuesday, Erin showed no sign of fatigue and was ready for another day of skiing. The twins were anxious to ski with us too and we all headed up the mountain for our last ski day. The twins started out following John down and I hung back so that I could take pictures, but if John paused or stopped they soon ditched him and latched onto Aunt Terri, much to her surprise at first.
"I was just skiing along and all of the sudden I realized Allison was right behind me, following me," Terri said. And Allison liked to follow closely, very closely, sometimes bumping Terri's skis. Allison also was very competitive with Kate and tried to keep ahead of her at all times and in the process of jockeying for position she often bumped Kate too and caused her to fall. It was like skiing/rollerhockey at times, and Kate wasn't impressed. I told Allison that I wanted to take a video of her so she and I hung back while Kate and Terri went ahead, but as you can see, Allison was intent on catching Kate and being ahead of her despite Kate's head start.
Where last year Kate was the speed demon and Allison was more cautious, this year the roles were reversed, at least during this first trip. Allison also frequently hopped along on her skis as she went down the slopes, saying she was doing ski jumps, which was pretty funny. Later on we let Erin be the leader and the twins followed her: After lunch Erin wanted to show John how she could ski on moguls so they went to the back of the mountain to find some while Terri and I took the twins on some easier intermediate runs in the front side. Much like Erin last year, they could handle the slopes fine but two or three of these harder runs were enough for Kate. I think Allison could have skied them the rest of the day.
When Erin and John rejoined us the girls asked to ski down "Dilly Dally Alley": an unmarked detour slope through some trees which they all discovered in ski school. It's narrow with snow which banks up each side, kind of forming a sort of natural half pipe.
The twins skied on real slopes for the first time only last year, and they've progressed enough to handle some blue runs already. Erin even managed to ski on some of the shorter black (advanced) runs on our last afternoon, something she insisted upon, just so she could say she did them, and she did them pretty well. "WHY do we have to go home?" Erin asked on wednesday morning. "We don't have to go back to school until monday, let's stay and ski every day until sunday!" "That's YOUR daughter," John advised me. Our next ski trip next month can't get here fast enough.
Some friends suggested that we meet them at a local park which has a region called "rock city" which is popular with kids and families. We didn't know what kind of weather we'd find ourselves in, since the forecast was the always useless "partly cloudy" and we'd be up at about 1000 feet elevation. I told the girls to grab a sweatshirt and I brought light jackets for them as well. They all decided to wear their school sweatshirts so we looked like we had our own class field trip in tow.
We were meeting Erin's best friend from Kindergarten, Maia, whose family moved to another school district late in their Kindergarten school year, but we've kept in touch. After they arrived and we had a picnic lunch and set off on our hike, which consisted of making our way from one big cluster of boulders to the next, stopping at each while the girls climbed all over and explored each one.
The rocks are made of sandstone, which made their surface slippery because of their loose, sandy texture, and soft enough that many people carved into them and they showed a lot of wear just from all the walking and climbing over the years. The ones near the beginning of the trail are really pretty used-looking. Here is a slide that has been worn into the side of one of them:
Our friends advised us that the hike would take at least 2 hours, which is about 1 hour and 50 minutes longer than my estimated "Mom, I'm tired of walking" point for the twins. But we were committed, and fortunately, the rocks and caves were endlessly fascinating and there wasn't any complaining, even though there were lots of falls and slides and bumps and bruises from slipping on the sandy rocks.
Erin was feeling especially photogenic. "Take a picture of me sitting right here." "Did you get that photo of me climbing there?" Sure, Erin. Uh huh. I mentioned the obvious wear and tear. Check this out: The fog was rolling in and out of our area so at times we could see almost nothing in the distance and other times we had some really beautiful views, though it was never clear enough for us to see down the valley below.
The girls especially liked being hoisted up into this high cave and looking down at us through the cave window. The two hours passed by amazingly quickly and we were back to our starting point, where we had a snack together and the girls had energy to spare and continued to climb on nearby rocks. But on way home fatigue finally set in and they all fell asleep. What a fun day.
