Ski Lessons

This year is my four year old daughter's first year of ski lessons and it didn’t start off too well. During the first 3 weeks of lessons she got more and more apprehensive about lessons (“I don’t want to go skiing daddy! Can we just sit in the car daddy?”). With my love of skiing, this was really breaking my heart to hear her say this. However, it was easy to understand my daughter's attitude; her classes were made up of six of more 4 year olds who had never been on skis and one 16 year old instructor. The instructor was doing her very best, but ultimately the kids spent most of their time sitting in the snow interrupted by an occasional horrific few moments that involved grabbing onto a fast moving rope, ultimately falling over then being dragged up the hill as a lift operator ran behind yelling “Let go! Let go of the rope tow!”

When the scheduled date of the fourth week of lessons rolled around, a huge snow storm hit Cascades. Due to too much snow(!!!), lessons were canceled for several weeks. When the ski area was finally reopened for lessons I wasn’t tooWhen the scheduled date of the fourth week of lessons rolled around, a huge snow storm hit the optimistic about what would happen with my daughter in her lessons; she did not want to go. So I spent the first half of that fourth week of lessons skiing with just her, and the second half skiing with her and her class. It took a lot of bribing with gummy bears, but by the end of that fourth week of classes she was skiing down the chair on her own (even as I write this a tear comes to my eye due to my extreme pride in my daughter right now who now tells me, “Can we go skiing every day daddy?”).

At the end of that fourth day of lessons I had two thoughts: 1)the words of my supervisor back when I was a ski instructor, “No matter how terrible your kids are in classes, the fourth week is a magic week and everyone skis on the chair lift.” 2) I really wish I had brought my camera.

For week number five I did bring my camera, and I wanted to share one of the images of what wife says put the biggest smile she has ever seen on my face. Enjoy!