Skiing with a four year old

Wow first of all I can't believe I have comments!! You all are so nice. Someday I'll figure out the blogrolling thing and make a list too. I've got an account at blogrolling, or blogroller, whatever the one everyone else is using. I haven't figured out where to put the code in my template though. Hopefully I'll get it figured out soon.

So as the title says, I went skiing this weekend with my four year old, Luke. I feel a little background is in order at this point. Prior to this weekend I had tried skiing twice and snowboarding three times. Though my husband coined a term specifically for me: snow assing, since that is really where I spent the bulk of my time when attempting to snowboard. He's one of those annoying people that can pick up anything physical extremely quickly. It's so unfair.

Well this time I decided to stop being so cheap and took a lesson. Luke and I took a one hour private lesson while Jay was off doing some crazy black diamond run or something, I'm sure. Luke did alright at first; our instructor had us each put one ski on to get used to it. He did alright until the first time he fell and then we had a major meltdown. I'm sure it didn't help that he had been so excited he only got six hours of sleep. Miraculously Jay appeared halfway through the lesson as we're trying to figure out what to do with Luke. He said that he could picture what was going on and figured he'd better come help. Thank goodness for that!! I managed to get about half an hour of one on one instruction, and I can turn and stop now without falling. Yay!

My friend Elaine came with us; she really is a better friend than I deserve. She doesn't ski or board but she wanted to come and she watched Luke while Jay and I did a few runs. Somehow she managed to get him back on skis; really she is amazing. Well Jay and I ended up at the top of the mountain and took a blue run down that ended up being a terrain park. That was really not cool. I got ran over by a snowboarder and fell several times. Once I ended up on my back with my skis pointing up towards the peak. Somehow I lived and got back onto a green run. We spent some time with Luke after that. Jay and I got him to really ski; it was the coolest thing.

So now I want to go again, but it is so darned expensive. I think next time we're going to pay the extra $$ and go to Mammoth. Luke said he wants to try snowboarding now and they do kid classes at Mammoth starting at age 4. We were at Mtn. High and they don't do kid boarding lessons until age 7. It was a lot closer though; only a 2 hour drive instead of 6.

The only real complaint I have is that people are disgusting. We got back to the parking lot and most of the cars around us were gone but there was so much garbage left behind. There was a trash can about 10 yards away, but apparently the people parked around us were unable to figure out how to walk there. Amazing, really, since they managed to walk to the lodge and ski or board all day. Elaine and I spent a few minutes carting garbage to the trash can while Jay was re-packing the car. It's frustrating because I try to set a good example to Luke and then he sees such blatant disregard for other people like that. He was the one that pointed out all the trash so it seemed like the right thing to do. It just upsets me that there are so many people that don't give a damn. I'll bet they are the same kinds of people that park in the red zone at preschool (but that's another rant).

Well I guess that's enough rambling for now! I really want to get the bloggrolling thing figured out; maybe I'll take another look at it today. I was pretty worn out yesterday when I was first trying it.