Nicholas’ 1st ski lesson - Nicholas tried his hand at skiing for the 1st time and seemed to enjoy the experience after watching from the sidelines last time. He said aside from the skiing, they had 2 snack breaks, a lunch meal of chicken burger and fries, and did lots of other stuff too like snowball fighting.

Wesley’s 2nd ski lesson - this was wesley’s 2nd time learning to ski so he’s a little more stable on his skis this time. They did more work with him on “making circles”… which I assume meant turning (something I saw them do with Emily last time using hoola hoops), but apparently he didn’t even see much of Nicholas because they were put in different groups.

Grace’s 2nd ski experience (1st was when I was 16 years old) - what can I say? It was actually kinda fun. My sister gave me some great tips to go on, and from there it was just a lot of “magic carpet” rides up the bunny slope and down again to practice. I think my snowboard experience helped me understand better the use of edges, but of course trying to make my legs go the direction my mind tells it to go is a whole nother thing.

Alex vs. the slopes - well in this bout, it was the slopes that won. Halfway through our first day of skiing, Alex twisted his knee badly in a fall, and meandered down the hill at a snail’s pace until he finally reached us at our rendez-vous point (about an hour after his hot lunch was ready). I told him that he should of had ski patrol sled him down, but I guess he didn’t come across any along that path. So what’s the upside of this? Well, he got to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the kids do their bit in class which was fun in its own way I suppose.

The Storm - since Alex could not ski a second day, we decided to head home earlier on Sunday instead. It had already begun storming Saturday afternoon so we were snowed in pretty good. Chains were in effect, so Highway-80 was trafficky and slow-going. It took us 4 hours just to get 40 miles down the mountain (our trip home took about 8 hours total). Along the way, all the cars had to pull over to the side every now and then to scrape off chunks of ice that had formed under the windshield wipers rendering them useless against the wind-blown snow. Julia, who’d left the resort at about 3:30pm to do a bit more skiing that Sunday, ended up driving 12 hours to get home because traffic was even more horrendous by then. We definitely saw a lot of accidents along the way, and families pulling out port-a-potties for their kids on stop-overs and such — never thought that’d come in handy on a ski trip. Too bad skiing fun always comes hand-in-hand with wintery storms.

On a side note, I want to again thank the Jarvinen family for having organized this ski trip which they had to withdraw from last minute due to unexpected circumstances. We missed you guys on this trip and look forward to our next trip to Tahoe together.