Pizza And French Fries

Dan and Henry are in Wenatchee, WA this weekend for Henry to race in the Apple Cup Ski Invitational.  Alice and I stayed home so that we could spend today up at Mt. Baker for her ski lesson.   We are a skiing family!

  Today was a big deal!   Alice's very first ski lesson and she was so excited.   It was an amazing day on the mountain - blue skies, sunshine, and low 30s.  

She's enrolled in a class specifically for six year olds, and it requires that a parent ski with their child.   And, I am that parent!  I am so happy that we get to experience this together.

 There are two other girls/moms in her class.  And, as luck would have it, Alice knows one of the girls quite well.  What a welcome surprise!   One other funny coincidence - a few weeks ago, I took a lesson from this great guy, Curtis.  He was such a good instructor and he told me about his two sons who are also instructors.   Guess who Alice got?   One of my instructor's sons, Elliot!  We love Elliot.   He was really fantastic and Alice thought it was so cool that Elliot's Dad taught me, and Elliot is teaching her.  Perfect!

 Alice and her friend, Emma.  Check out those pizzas!   The instructors teach the kids that a snowplow is a "pizza" and going straight down for speed is "french fries."

 Alice did a really great job.  I am so proud of her.  However... we did have a little mishap with the chair lift.   This was Alice's very first time on a chair lift, and I'm here to say - it's not as easy as you might think to teach a six year old to get on a chair lift.   She actually fell off - that sounds worse than it actually was - but she did fall off the lift and my motherly instincts kicked in, causing me to launch myself off the lift to help her, almost getting knocked in the head by another person's skis.  It was kind of an ugly sight.  But we're fine and the staff was great, stopping the lift and getting us right back on, acting as though this kind of thing happens every day.  After that, the staff kindly slowed the lift when they saw us next in line.

The class is designed such that the parent is right next to the child, helping the entire time.  Alice and I quickly realized (and I think Elliot realized this pretty quickly too), that we both ski much better apart than together.   From the time she could talk, Alice's favorite saying has always been: "I'll do it myself!"  She doesn't want my help - she's an independent girl.   At one point, Elliot set it up that all parents would hold their poles horizontal and the child would hold the other end - so the pair would ski down the hill right next to eachother.  What a disaster!   We fell and fell and then we told Elliot that Alice would like to go down by herself... and she totally rocked!   She was cruising down, making pizzas, doing french fries, and zooming down like she's been skiing for years.   I just followed behind.   And we both did great.  By the end of the day, she was starting at the top of Chair Two, skiing the entire way down, not stopping or falling once, all the way down, past the tow rope, down the big (big!) hill, and right up to the back of the line to get on the lift again.

We have three more weekends with Elliot and the other girls/moms.   We're definitely looking forward to it.  Might even have to show Dan and Henry some of our fancy moves next weekend.  So happy to be a skiing family.