How was skiing, you ask?

How was the skiing? Holy Shmoley. How was skiing.

Vacation week.

This was my first time skiing with the kids. My first time skiing in about 11 years. Grace's first time on skiis in her life. Jake went skiing with AJ once last year, had a lesson, loved it.

This time, Jake wanted to try snowboarding. Grace wanted to ski.
They each had an hour lesson when we got there. Grace’s instructor told me she was ready to go, “Watch her to be sure she makes wide turns on the way down the hill and maybe hold her arm as she gets off the lift, but otherwise, she’s doing great!”

Jake’s instructor (long haired and to be honest, stupid sounding) said Jake was ready to go too. They didn’t get to the lift because there was another person in Jake’s class that was slow to catch on, so they just didn’t get to try the lift. “But, it’s not hard, so it won’t be a problem.” Then he reminded Jake to “just sit down” if you feel you’re out of control. “That’s the most important thing to remember.” Then he laughed a stupid air-headed laugh and that was that.

So off we went to the lift. Grace and I went up together, and Jake went up with another snowboarder (a much smarter looking teenager who was happy to help him on and off the lift – as I have no experience getting on a lift with a snowboard, and it IS different than with skiis.) We get to the top, get off the lift. All good. Grace begins moving toward the slopes. Jake buckles up his buckles, or whatever they are.
Grace is 30 yards ahead, “ARE YOU GUYS COMING????”
Jake begins to move and makes it about 20 yards and falls, but gets right back up and goes again. Grace sees that Jake and I are moving, and she starts down the slope, alone, assuming we’ll catch up. She’s off. Jake falls. Grace is going down the slope to the left, Jake and I are headed to the right. I’ve never been down the slope to the left, where Grace is going. No idea what that slope is like.
Try to call her, but she has a helmet on and can’t hear us at all. I follow her, but can’t catch up.
Yes, that’s what I said. I COULDN’T CATCH UP TO GRACE.
I’m another 30 yards down the slope, look up to find Jake, he’s gone – down the other slope.
Two beginners, gone on their own, me not knowing what to do.

I decided to be more concerned that little Grace has headed down an unknown slope and has maybe gone off the trail, into the woods and may, at this moment, be buried in the snow, among the trees. I head down her slope and tell myself that Jake, being older, will be fine – at least I’ve been down his slope and I know it’s a pretty easy one.
I never do catch up to Grace. I get to the bottom, where the two trails come together. I see Grace waiting by the lift, she sees me. I wait for Jake to come down. Here he comes. He looks good. Cruising down, down, down, then he falls over. I’m thinking, “Wow, he looks good.” I ski over to him to find him bent up on the ground, reaching up a hand, teary imploring eyes that say, “Help me.”
He explains he fell over and over, hit his head really hard front and back(thank goodness when Mommy said he could wear a helmet if he wanted to, he opted to do just that), and begins to cry a little shuttering cry. I hoist him up. I say it’s time to go inside and eat some dinner anyway, take a break, then we’ll come back out and try again.
Grace is miffed that we have to go inside. Who needs to eat? I’m skiing, man!

While we eat Jake explains that the stupid instructor (sorry, can’t help it) didn’t teach him several critical features of snowboarding, most importantly, HOW TO STOP. So Jake had fallen millions of times on his way down the trail. It was icy, granular snow. His back, where his shirt had lifted out of his snowpants was all red and raw. His head hurt. His tailbone was killing him.

Grace couldn’t wait to get back out there. “Jake, are you done eating?”

Jake and I discussed whether maybe he wanted to switch to skiis. Maybe skiing isn’t quite as hard, and he’s done it once before. He decides to stick with the snowboard. Tucks his sweatshirt back into his snowpants. We go back out.
We realize we can all three go on the lift together, so we do. The kids yuck it up the whole way up the hill. Grace is literally sitting on the edge of the seat, so anxious to be back on that mountain, grinning ear to ear, chatting excitedly and endlessly. Jake is soaking up her enthusiasm and by the time we get off the lift, he’s raring to go again.

We determine which trail we are ALL going to take this time.
Grace, again, goes ahead and stands, waiting while Jake buckles up. She keeps yelling back to us, “ARE YOU COMING? CAN I GO NOW?”
Jake begins. Falls. Gets up. Falls. Goes about 10 yards each time. Falling on the ice, on his tailbone, or forward on his knees. Getting frustrated. Grace is still waiting by the sign with the green square that points to the trail, “CAN I JUST GO MOM?!!!” After Jake falls about 4 times, I tell Grace to go ahead.
Jake and I continue…he gets up, goes 10 yards, falls hard. I swoop around, ask if he’s okay, help him up, try to encourage him, tell him he looked good that time, try to give him advice (I don’t know the first thing about snowboarding). He looks more and more defeated, and is obviously in more and more pain with every fall. We continue with this hurtful routine until we’re about ½ way down the hill.
“Mom,” he says with tears in his eyes, “I can’t do this anymore.” Okay. So how do we get down the hill? Long way to go. He wraps his arm around me, presses the edge of his board against the outside edge of my left ski, and I plow slowly down the hill. We go a little at a time. We have to keep stopping to adjust ourselves. My knee is barely holding up under the pressure as I go sideways down the hill, holding up his weight and mine against my ski. We turn to continue on the other side (my right ski) and we lose control. I begin to fall and yell, “JAKE, WE’RE GOING DOWN!!”
Crash. We’re okay. But we’re done with that strategy.

We’re about ¾ of the way down the hill and we can see the bottom and the lift ahead. Jake decides to walk the rest of the way. I ask if he minds if I go ahead and look for Grace – after all, it’s been a good 20 minutes since I let her bomb her way down on her own. She’s down there alone at the bottom of the hill, hopefully.
Grace and I wait at the lift for Jake. He’s done. Wants to go inside. There’s enough time for maybe 3 more runs. A friend, who happens to be there at the same time, offers to take Grace up for another run, while I go inside with Jake, return his rentals and get him situated inside. He pulls out his money. Says he’s going to get a hot chocolate and a candy bar and play some arcade games. I think that’s a great idea.
When I come back out, Grace is just coming down the hill to the lift, our friend just behind her. They explain that she ended up on the lift by herself (they usually skip a chair and she didn’t know so she bolted ahead and got on by herself), but she was fine and she waited for them when she got to the top. They all went down together.
So, Grace and I had a chance to go down one more time before the mountain closed. On the way up she turned to me, sitting on the edge of the seat as before, excited and giddy she said, “So, this time…just you and me…so, we can just go as fast as we want, and NO STOPPING, right?” I agreed. We smiled at each other.
We got to the top, and began down immediately. I was behind a little, watching her. Within about 50 yards down, I realized that she was going so fast, the gap between us was growing, and I was going to have really work to catch up. I had to crouch down as low as I could, skiis pin straight and bomb down JUST TO CATCH UP TO HER. When I got alongside her, I yelled to her, “Are you in control?”
She looked over at me, and apparently not having heard me at all, she yelled back, “OH!! ARE WE RACING NOW?!!!”

I wish you could have seen her. Teeny Tiny Little Purple Girl. No poles (they don’t give little kids poles to learn to ski), hands held behind her back like a speedskater, knees bent, skiis slightly in a “V”, bombing like lightening straight down the hill. No turning. No fear. Smiling her little head off.
Having only fallen once, during her lesson, she probably has no idea how much it would have hurt if she HAD fallen going that fast!
She’s completely addicted. Probably will be an Olympian. Yes, I think probably so.

So that was our night. Jake says he’ll never snowboard again – which is the saddest part. But, he’s eager to ski again, and I imagine he’ll get on a snowboard again sometime. If it hadn’t been so icy, he probably wouldn’t have had such a bad time of it. It’s so tough to learn in icy conditions. And, snowboarding, as we learned, is just REALLY hard to learn (even if your instructor isn’t a total dork who’s probably high as a kite).

The kids had brought blankets and pillows for the ride home, and slept soundly the whole way. We got home just before 11pm.

The next day, the kids went snow tubing with the Parks and Rec program. Jake landed on his tailbone again. Then later that afternoon, at home, he was skipping across the kitchen and he fell on his tailbone again, hard, on the hardwood threshold to the living room, and couldn’t get up. I found him that way when I got home – laying on the floor, with a pillow under his head, moaning. Turned out he was okay, a little Motrin and some time on the couch being completely spoiled and he was up and about again. But, I don’t think it helped his view of snowboarding at all.