Parenthood - 2020-03-05 Ski Club 4

March 5, 2020

After the disappointment of last week's downhill ski club being cancelled I felt I owed it to the kids to go at least one more time. I would have preferred to go Friday as Thursdays I have a biweekly standing meeting and I was super busy at work this week. Thursdays are also Michael's music class. But a strike was called on Thursday, so Thursday was clearly the better day for a ski day.

I was worried about the snow and whether Vorlage would be an icy slushy mess but I contacted the hill the day before and was told that everything was still open and they'd even had snow Tuesday night! And indeed, the conditions were pretty good!

I filled the van again - Maddie up front, Elizabeth, Samia, Harry, Shaughnessy, Bianca and Matthew.

Matthew was hugely excited and enjoyed himself greatly. I arranged a private lesson for him as I didn't want to add a much younger complete beginner to the other kids class. He lucked out big time and got an amazing instructor - Dan - who also happened to be the guy that has been facilitating our group all along. By the end of his lesson Matthew was deemed ready to try one of the blue trails on the furthest away hill "Birch". He fell his first time and was a bit intimidated but quickly figured out that as long as he didn't have to get up on a hill then he was okay. After a few more times he decided he wanted to go down the other side. Unfortunately we took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up on Cream Puff. I was able to figure out how to get him past the mogul section but it ends up on a rather intimidating hill and Matthew took one look and promptly sat down. I was just contemplating my options when a VERY nice lady who happened to have spent many years as a ski instructor passed by. She saw that he was in trouble and offered to ski him down the hill. Matthew said no thanks but I overruled him and she carried him about 2/3s of the way down until he reckoned he could do the rest on his own. He DID manage the rest on his own but more sledding on his bum than actual skiing. Luckily no injury resulted and he didn't object to sticking to the easier runs for the rest of the day!

Since I didn't want to take Matthew on harder hills, we didn't see much of the other kids. I had to insist they take one lift all together with us to make sure I got our photo together lol. They were playing some kind of tag game that involved sneaking and hiding (although they were careful to explain that they were being safety conscious and no one was getting tagged while skiing). Olivia and her mom came skiing too for the afternoon so she joined in with the rest of them.

Everyone had a great time - although when it was time to go most of them failed to show up at the appointed time. I guess they just didn't want to leave!