Skiing With Grandkids

First of all a safety tip: Do not eat crackers similar in size to your camera card while preparing to insert camera card into computer. There is a high risk you may insert the camera card in your mouth and chomp down.

This afternoon we left the 45-55 mph winds in town and headed up to the cross country ski trails with Leslie and the kids. We promised Leslie it would be "calm in the trees". Let's just say it was calmER. After mistakenly putting my own skis on before trying to put skis on two girls who had never skiied before, discovering Leslie had brought two pairs of ski boots but neither matched the one pair of skis she had brought, and finally getting Pierce bundled up in the sled with Leslie forced to walk the trail, we were off.

The girls did amazingly well for their first time out. They scooted along in the track and fell much less than I expected. Myra spent a fair amount of time on her back but that was mostly because she got bored if she had to wait in the trail very long and would drop backwards for something to do. I expected some whining about how hard it was or how cold they were but nobody whined or complained and everybody seemed to have a good time. Pierce even relaxed in the sled and didn't even try to escape. Actually he didn't even move or make a noise. I think the only part of his body that moved was his big brown eyes. Well, there was the time his hat fell down over his eyes and his body slid down so far he was buried in the blanket so he was not only blind but trapped. There was some movement and noise for a few moments then.

Dean and I had gone to the gym earlier in the day figuring we wouldn't be getting much of a workout skiing with a 3 and 5-year old. Turns out picking kids up off the ground with skis twisted around their bodies, or trying to ski with them in front of you is more of a workout than we anticipated.

The sled Leslie pulled has come full circle. We used it with Leslie and Abby when they were little, then loaned it to our good friends the Kellisons who loaned it to our mutual good friends the Shannons who then returned it to us early this year. It is far from the high-tech, insulated and covered sleds they have for kids now but it works just as well and brought back all kinds of memories.

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Skiing With Grandkids