Jack’s First Ski Trip!

We just got home from probably the best ski trip of my life!!! Jack and I went to Paoli for the day and we both had an absolute blast! It was a perfect day – about 40 degrees and full sun. It was pretty crowded, but not too bad – probably because of the snow and ice storm we had this week. I've been trying to get a group together for a couple of weeks… Greg and Billie wanted to go pretty badly, but her parents were staying at their house, so they really couldn't leave. Blake wanted to go, but he didn't have any money. And Abram wanted to go, but he just got back from Canada yesterday, so he wanted to stay home. But I'm actually very glad it was just Jack and me. It gave us a chance to spend lots of time together and I was able to focus on him and teach him how to do it. It started out pretty rough. They have this new area for kids on the rightmost side of the mountain and it's very flat and surrounded by a hill of snow so there is no way for a kid to accidentally go down a large hill. Jack was pretty uneasy and didn't have much balance at first, but he didn't get frustrated at all and kept trying over and over. I was really proud of him. We stayed there for a while and then he said he was ready to ride a chair lift, so we went all the way over to the leftmost green circle run and rode it all the way down. It was kind'of scary because even that run is pretty steep compared to the bunny slopes and especially to the kid's area! Jack followed behind me and held on to my waist and we went down together. Even with him holding on to me, he lost his balance and fell down a couple of times. At the end of the run there is a very steep part and he started sliding down under me and ended up going between my legs! He slid for about 20 yards on his own and started picking up some serious speed, but he remembered what I told him and he fell over to the side to stop. I think it scared him pretty good (scared me too!) and he didn't want to go on that run any more after that. But we did get to ride the chair lift for the first time and that was pretty cool. I was actually pretty nervous and was holding on to his jacket VERY tightly. I forgot how freekin high those chair lifts go and his little legs weren't long enough for him to sit all the way back in the chair. I think he enjoyed the ride though and he kept talking about how beautiful the snow was and how beautiful the scenery was. It really was a perfect day. We never got cold. The snow was absolutely perfect – like packed powder with no ice at all. After the chair lift ride, he wanted to get some lunch so we headed in and he got a hot dog, orange Powerade, and some Cheetos. I got a delicious chili and a (flat) Diet Pepsi. After lunch, he said that he wanted to try some poles and I kept telling him that they would only make it worse and I kept pointing out that none of the other kids had poles, but he insisted, so I reluctantly got him the smallest poles I could find. Then we went back to the kid's area and skied there for a while, but he quickly got bored and wanted to go back to the bunny slope with the small chair lift (we rode that one after riding the big chair lift to get to the top of the mountain). So we went back over there and I started skiing down in front of him and telling him to ski down to me. He started doing a fantastic job! He got better and better each time he tried it! After about 3 runs on that bunny slope, he was skiing all the way down by himself without falling or needing any help from me! We spent the rest of the afternoon on that bunny slope and were easily there for 3 hours! I have no idea how many runs we took but it had to be at least 40. He was doing so well and kept wanting me to follow him! There was a really, really, nice man working where you get on the chair lift and he kept asking Jack how he was doing and if he was having fun, etc. He looked like he just got out of prison, but he was the nicest, most friendly man I've seen in a long time. He was talking to every single person that rode up the lift and kept saying things like "you have a wonderful smile" and "leave some snow on the hill for the rest of us" (to the people that had obviously fallen down several times!) He made the day even better. Jack originally wanted to go tubing today too and mentioned that a couple of times during the day and I kept dreading it because I knew that would be the end of his skiing for the day and I noticed that you had to drive to it (it wasn't on the main hill) and it costs like $25/person. But I told him we could go after we were done skiing. Well, the sun started to set and I asking him if he was ready to go tubing and he said "no" - he wanted to keep skiing! I was so excited! Eventually I told him we'd have to leave when the sun disappeared from the sky and when it did, he asked me if he could go down 4 more times! Of course I couldn't say no! It was truly a great day with my son and one I'll never forget. He was so excited and did such a great job and never once got frustrated or tired. He never wanted to quit the whole time. That is exactly what I was hoping for today – a good first experience for Jack so he'd love skiing as much as I do.

Winter storm

Wow, what a crazy day today! Missy is out of town for the Woodplay dealers meeting in Raleigh, NC, so I'm home alone with the kids. We got about 2 inches of snow yesterday and I took them to Grandmas and it was a piece of cake. I woke up this morning and we had about 5-6 inches of snow so I decided to try it again... It was probably one of the most stressful mornings of my life. Ally woke up and said she was sick and needed to throw up, so she was crying about that. Jack was crying because he wanted to go outside and play. Abby was crying because she wanted to go to Grandmas. I knew that I wouldn't get any work done here at home, and I didn't want to burn a vacation day, so I decided to go ahead and go to work. Well, I got stuck backing out of the driveway and nothing I did seemed to work. I eventually was able to rock the truck back-and-forth enough to get it going forward. The only place I could get any traction was in the deep ruts in the road, but I made it out of the subdivision OK. Then I got onto Epworth and realized I had made a big mistake. There were absolutely NO other cars on the road and there were so many broken trees and fallen branches, that I literally had to swerve to miss them. One place had trees on both sides of the road and they scraped my truck as I drove past. I decided to turn about and go back home but I got stuck trying to do that so I had to keep going straight on Epworth to Covert. I literally thought I was going to have to leave my truck and carry 3 kids home. And I was dressed for work so I have no hat, gloves, nor boots. Idiot! I had to take 164 to Lloyd Expressway back to Epworth to make it home. It was snowing so hard that my windshield wipers were frozen and not working hardly at all. They were just pushing ice around on my windshield. It was pretty darn scary. At least I knew that I was close enough to home to walk if we needed to. I made it back to Tecumseh and then built up enough speed to make the turn and hill at Tippecanoe and did the same thing getting into out driveway. I was very happy to be home and really thankful I didn't have to walk. This was not a good day for Missy to be gone!