Tallie

The snow and cold weather in Utah persists. At first the snow may bring about some nostalgia in November and then it is a little exciting for the Christmas season while we are dreaming of a White Christmas and all. But now it is January with nothing to look forward to but snow shoveling and freezing for three more months. So what is a mother to do to get through all the yuckiness? Well Ski Lessons of course!

The first Wednesday in January always brings about our annual tradition of the first day of ski lessons. What could be more fun then bundling up 6 year-old Sam and 4 year-old Tallie? I had these two so layered they probably could have withstood several weeks on the Siberian Tundra.

I have been nervous for weeks after enrolling Tallie as this would be her first year skiing. I could just picture her as a pink snow suited heap bawling in the snow and that is providing that I could actually get her to walk from the car to the slopes in her ski boots which, by the way, is no easy feat! For weeks she has made us call her Dasher (her favorite reindeer because on the PBK plates, Dasher is skiing). She was convinced she would take to it and be an absolutely awesome skier. This attitude kept up until we were on the way to rent skis and Sam told her that she was going to crash when she went off the cliff, and that it was going to "hurt so bad- but it's okay, you just have to try again!" Tallie immediately began to get all worked up, and the North Face poster of the skier going off a 100ft cliff at the ski rental shop really didn't help matters much. She was terrified to even try on the skis at Park Sports. But after about a 25 minute pep talk/bribe/treats, I did manage to convince her she would not be faced with any cliffs for at least a year and that the bunny hill was an okay place after all.

Well I will stop going on because a picture tells a thousand words right? In the end, she did absolutely rock! We are so proud of our little Dasher as she now makes us call her. So far we have gone skiing 3 times and she has already mastered the "pizza" and "french fries" and can do all with out the help of the wormie! (the little purple rubber tube that ties the two skies together)

This is Tallie's first day of skiing, she loves to ski way too fast and discovered when she goes to fast, she can simply sit down and sled on her skis, then with the help of her ski boots she kind of just raises herself back into standing position once the terrain flattens back out. It is the funniest thing to watch!







I don't really have any pictures of Sam skiing because he just takes off down the mountain and I am lucky if I catch him before he just hops back on the lift. But he and Tallie did turn into a pretzle and the bottem of the lift last Friday


I love the lift rides- it's the only time during the day I am not constantly hollering "Pizza!" "Red Light!" "Look out" "Sam SLOW DOWN!" "Pizza Tallie" "Don't eat the brown snow" etc etc. although trying to get the two kids on the lift by myself is insane. I have to actually lift Tallie up and try to shuffle in my skis to the red and green "Stand Here plaque" and then with one hand try to give Sam a boost up as he is not quite tall enough to get on by himself. Last year I actually had a little neighbor 5 year old girl fall off the lift when I was trying to get them both on- so scary!


Okay, if you are not sure what you are looking at, this would be Tallie after- going way too fast down the mountain I had to jump in front of her and ski backwards for a while trying to stop her. She ended up stopping by in between my skis by grabbing my feet while laughing her head off. It was so cute I had to take a picture!