Elora found this huge snowball chunk. She called it her ice cream cone and started eating it with Ollie.
We brought the little frog tent out with us to have a little shelter from the wind. It made for a nice “base camp”.
Here’s Ollie! He was much happier to put his skis on when he saw that I was going to ski too. We did a few runs like this so he would get comfortable standing up on his skis.
Meanwhile, Elora has it all figured out. Look at those cuties. Along with Grandma and Marion hanging out in the tent in the background.
Elora cruised along while Ollie and I tried to catch up. The only tricky thing skiing like this with a little kid is they tend to either lean/hang on to you, which throws off their balance, or they drag their skis on the side and flop around. So you actually have to do a lot of work to get them to stand in the right position.
Here I am trying to push Oliver forward and down and help him feel how much pressure to put on the snow with the edges of his skis. This worked really well for Elora last year. She started making pizzas right away after I pushed down on her legs like this for a couple runs. If Oliver doesn’t decide to give up skiing, he’ll probably be able to ski as well as Elora by the end of the season. The only thing he is lacking is leg strength and courage!
Taking the kids over to the park to ski always sounds like a great idea. Until I realize I have to do most of the heavy lifting on the way back up!
Elora’s doing really great. She’s still not caught up to last year, but she’s able to cruise down the whole hill by her self. We’ll be heading out again on Saturday for a couple hours. I’m guessing by then she’ll be at the same skill level as she was at the end of last year.
Here’s our little cutie.
After Ollie got comfortable standing on his skis while I skied down with him, I let him go for a 10 ft. stretch at a time into my arms. It was about all he could do before falling over with laughter. You’d swear the skis tickled his feet or something.
This was Ollie’s second day skiing and he still alternated between giggling profusely and saying “No no no! Giggle Giggle… yay! faster! no! no! Ya! Faster!”
Walking back up the hill…again… is very tiring! Elora and Oliver would take turns sitting on my shoulders. Karen helped carry one of their skis, but she’s still pretty sore so she can’t too do too much heavy lifting.
Oliver is like his sister in that he can’t eat enough snow. This bite of snow he said was “French Toast” probably because the snow reminded him of powdered sugar.
Walking back home was pretty tiring, but the kids got a little ride part of the way on the ski bag.
To end the day, we let the kids relax in the birds-nest swing.
And finally, since Elora and Oliver love watching ski films, we made them their own little ski movie, with a combination of cheesy German ski party techno and epic classic rock. Elora loves going off sweet jumps. Oliver loves eating snow and giggling until he falls off his skis.
