Bums in the Making!

For the first time this past weekend, we headed up the hill for an intro to skiing for the kids and some prime powder time for us!

Last year...

Least year at the tail end of the ski season, we took the kids to see how long they could stay upright on a pair of skis. Our experiment turned out better than anticipated, so we invested in family season passes this year, hoping that it would be an investment in fun quality time as well. We have access to five local moutnains through our season passes (The Vail Resorts Group includes Vail, Breckenridge, Keyston, Arapahoe Basin, and Beaver Creek...also a few in other states and three French/Swiss resorts--in our dreams), so our plan is to do the grand tour-de-resorts throughout the season and enjoy the unique benefits that each hill has to offer. The mountains are all within a half an hour to an hour of each other, so we have the luxury of staying in one location and skiing different hills in the same trip if we want to. The passes also have RFID technology that will record stats like what level the kids have achieved during their lessons, what types of runs we've skied, the amount vertical feet we've climbed, and it will even beam free pictures to our account that photographers take while we're on the mountains (although half of our pictures from this weekend never showed up-bummer).

One of the pictures that made it...

Aside: Peter promised that never again would he plan a ski weekend right before Christmas. It was definitely crazy trying to get ready and packed, and not exactly the best timing with so much else to do. Like making last-minute Elf on the Shelf accomodations because we found out the night before the trip that the kids were super anxious about what would happen to Elfie while we were gone, asking a million questions about whether or not he would be in the car or at the hotel to 'watch over' them. But once we finally got to the resort, we conceded that the timing wasn't that bad, especially since the the resorts were surprisingly empty on Friday night and all day Saturday!

Elfie, photobombed by one
very dedicated golddigger.

Let the record show that Elfie indeed made it after all...and that kids in pictures are extremely unpredictable.

We picked Keystone for our first trip of the season because we've skied the other resorts before (aside from A-Basin), and heard that Keystone was a good place for kids. It certainly was, as we found out, with both free front-row family parking and a gondola line for families with small kids--score! We stayed in town and booked lessons and daycare for Saturday, leaving Sunday open for skiing with the big kids...Ethan is still too young for real skis so he went to daycare both days.

Sleepy time and getting ready in the morning. (You know you're
in ski country when the pack n' play goes next to the ski rack!)

We arrived Friday afternoon just as the snow started to fall, and dropped Peter off at Breckenridge so he could work in half a day of skiing with a friend from school who happened to be in town on vacation.

Views from our hotel, including a gorgeous Saturday sunrise over the slopes!

Saturday dawned bright and snowy, and we headed off early to drop the kids at school and hit the slopes. We enjoyed freely skiing grown-up runs and nervously spying on the kids, as we had no idea how they would actually fare during their first full-day "school" experience. We skied past the ski school area a few times, and were thoroughly impressed when we caught Marie going up and down the kids' slope with the the magic carpet (moving sidewalk) a few times, looking like a real ski bum! She also had a blast playing with Ripperoo the Dog (one lucky instructor got to dress up as the dog mascot), whose tail she felt obligated to go pull after every run. We could hear her giggling all the way from our hiding place at the fence, and later at pick-up time she was mad that she had to leave already!

Spying on Ski School from the lift, and zombie Marie going up the magic carpet.

The instructor caught me in the midst of this mom-arazzi moment;  it's hard to hear, but he asked, "Is that little troublemaker yours?" to which I replied "Yup!" and he said, "Sweet kid!" 

Proud mama right here!

According to his report card, Erik had lots of fun and skied a little, but also had an accident toward the end of the day (we normally have to tell him to go to the bathroom in public because he won't ask), so we spent that night digging up quarters for the hotel laundry. Because life can't ever be too dull, now can it? Thankfully, we still made it to church and a quick dinner before all crashing in our room from exhaustion!

An "epic" ski date!

On Sunday we dropped Ethan off and and got the kids all geared up for their first round of skiing with us. We were delighted to discover that the beginner runs at the top of the mountain also had a separate learning area with a magic carpet open to the public, so we headed straight for that. But the kids weren't having it, and after listening to Marie whimper for thirty minutes about being cold and wanting to be at ski school instead of skiing with her boring parents and not liking the "big" ski hill that was like .0002 degrees steeper than the ski school one, we finally plopped them in the gondola and headed over to one of the less-crowded back peaks to have lunch and warm up.

Pouting in the gondola on the way to lunch...

...and smiling on the way back!

That did the trick, and by the time we finished lunch and loaded the gondola back to the easy slopes, the kids decided happily that we would be their pretend ski instructors, we would play "follow the leader," and they were happy to try one more run on the bunny hill.

One run quickly turned into ten, and that single afternoon made all the difference--we both had so much fun skiing with the kids! They were both delightful, giggling little ski bums who not only made it down the "big" bunny hill, but the even bigger beginner-level slope next to it with a real chair lift, as well as the kids' "terrain park" with a tunnel that Erik kept begging to go through run after run. (We only wiped out once)! I didn't get any good footage of Erik skiing, since both of my hands were tied up using the harness and straps with him, but even on the last run in whiteout conditions, he kept asking to go again. And Marie totally blew us away with her newfound skill:

We both agreed that the transformation in less than 24 hours (which you can clearly see from the first video to this last one) was just incredible.

Little speed demon really didn't want to stop!

(And yes, I was filming while skiing--but I went 

slowly and made sure not to crash into anyone)!

And those last two hours of joy on Sunday afternoon made it unquestionably worth every single second of lugging gear around and shoving frozen fingers into mittens, and every last penny dropped from our aching bank account to get the passes and lessons and lodging for the season. Marie even told me this morning that she wished she was back up skiing and she is totally bummed that she has to wait soooo loooong before our next trip.

Wagons: the magical solution to carting around 200+ lbs
of gear and kids!

So despite all of the hard work and stressful moments, when put to the test, it appears our master plan to make fun family memories and ski bums all at once is working like a charm. I'll be counting down the days till next time right along with Marie!