Skiing

This past weekend we went skiing. We went with a few other families and between us we had seven kids, including three two year olds. I don't know what made us think this would be a good idea.

In preparation for the day, I tried to psych Carter up by telling him how much fun he was going to have!  He walked around that whole week telling everyone "We going skiing on Saturday!" It was so cute that a crucial fact totally escaped my attention...um...he had NO IDEA what skiing was.

So in an effort to educate him on what he would actually be doing, I looked up videos of people skiing. I just typed 'skiing' into YouTube and clicked on the first video that came up.

Carter and I watched as a man made his way down a mountain. He looked interested and I was thinking what a smart mom I was to have thought of this!

Then all of a sudden the man hits some sort of bump, goes flying up in the air, crashes to the ground and slides the rest of the way down on his ass surrounded by his equipment. He's screaming and cursing the entire time.

Carter turned around and said "Mama...I DON'T want to go skiing."

Oh nice, nice job Danielle.

This was kind of like the time when I saw flashing lights outside our house and took Carter out to see the police car...only to find out it was animal control picking up road kill. And I gave my son a front row seat. Now I had probably scarred him for life as far as skiing was concerned.

I eventually found a video of kids skiing and having fun and got him back on board.

On the day of the trip the back of our car looked like we were going away for twelve weeks...when in fact it was going to be more like 6 hours. The jackets alone took up half the room. Plus, I had to pack like five extra outfits because Carter has this thing about his clothes being wet. So yeah, skiing is probably the thing to do with a child like that, right?

Unloading at the mountain took four people three trips each. We had already killed like half an hour and Carter hadn't even SEEN a pair of skis yet.

Between figuring out what to do with Grant, putting the kid's clothes on, getting rentals, getting ourselves dressed and trying to walk with two year olds wearing ski boots...I'd say we were at the mountain for almost two hours before any actual skiing occurred.

After all that, the kids went down this little hill for about 20 minutes before they decided they had had enough. I was standing in line for the chair lift when I heard a familiar screech echoing across the slopes.

And sure enough, there was my son screaming and laying in a pile at the bottom of the hill. He had managed to kick off not only his skis, but also one of his boots. At which point he had a meltdown because his sock was wet. God help us.

Poor Mike was trying to control Carter while wearing his own skis. It looked pretty difficult.

The man behind us in line actually said "That poor kid! That's no way to teach a lesson." I really wanted to turn around and say "Hey! Then you go teach him if you can do it so much better!" But instead I just agreed with him and got on the chairlift...

Afterwards, I tried to explain to Mike how I would have gone to help him but I was stuck in line.

He said "Yeah, Danielle, that rope that was holding you in would have been pretty tough to break through..."

I'm so glad he sees things my way.