Ski Armitage

I have a little blog angel sitting on my shoulder... her name is Karen and she's my sis-in law. She never lets me wait too long to update my blog before I'm getting little emails on my computer complaining in such a nice way :)

As usual, my excuse is always being busy, busy, busy. But right now I'm just lazing around my house, so no big excuse.

Here's the latest photos from our ski trip. We have a great church-owned campsite about 2 hours from here and we rented a cabin for a few days before Christmas. We've been telling the kids we would go skiing for a couple of years, but last year when we were planning on going, we were already in Spokane at a water park hotel and it was snowing so heavily, that we bagged the ski thing. I have to say- I'm NOT a ski bunny- I DON'T enjoy the cold weather. Give me a towel and sunscreen any day of the week! It's also super expensive-in fact, I made that point to Clint as we were driving to the ski slopes a few days ago. For our whole family to get 3 day ski passes at the beginning rate (which included a lesson and rentals and the lift tickets), we could have almost paid for two tickets to Hawaii- I KNOW!! But, being the good wife and mom that I am, I went along with it. We crammed 8 of us in the car (our niece from Australia, Becky, is still here with us until next month), and with all our gear, snowstuff, food etc for 3 days, it's a good thing we were only crammed that way for 2 hours.

So- the kids had a BALL! We took a couple sleds with us and they played in the snow the first day. The next two days we went to the ski slopes and the kids did great. At first, before we had the lesson, they were getting frustrated trying to get their skis to do what they wanted, but once we had the 90 minute lesson, they were having so much fun. I have to say, I only bit it once, and that was getting on the rope tow- how embarrassing! In fact, Emily told Zach, "Look, mom just fell down" and Zach told her, "that's not my mom!" LOL

Emily and Rachel had the hardest time getting the ski thing down, they were doing great by the end, but a little more cautious. Allison on the other hand could be an olympic star one day. She was going on all the runs with Clint by the end of the trip and skiing like a pro. She does her turns really well, so she just goes back and forth, back and forth down any hill you give her. She absolutely LOVED it. Kenzie also did really well after an initial confidence problem. She has a totally different style, she goes STRAIGHT down the hill, making a wedge with her skis to slow her down. She did great too. Zach was also the pro, and took off during the second day to go hang out with friends up the slopes who he found from home. He didn't even want to really come on the trip- he's so at the age where hanging with his family is not even cool anymore and he's also not a snow person, but he really loved it. See... parents really do know something sometimes. Becky also had a ball playing in the snow and skiing. She's only been a few times long ago, but did great on the slopes.

As for me, I skiied, did fine, blah! I'm not a ski lover like I said. So, the second day, I made Clint bring me home after a half day and I did work on my computer for my Masters. Maybe I can talk him into a Hawaiian or Mexican vacation one of these days. Here's our pics... nothing from Christmas yet except a cute pic of a cake Kenzie and Rachel made. I bought Kenzie a bunch of stuff for making cakes like the TV show Cake Boss. We made fondant and decorated it. It was way harder than it looked, but it turned out cute even so. Merry Christmas!