Our Ski Trip

Rob and I took Sierra skiing for her first time yesterday! Ahhh! It was great. We tried to take pictures, but our camera got too cold and wouldn't work for us up there. So I will just have to write about it. So, I thought that teaching Sierra was going to be simple. After our first run down, however, I thought differently. It was pretty cold up there and after our first run I was sweating like crazy because I was trying all of these different ways to help her. First we tried to have her ski behind me and hold onto my bottom. She flew right between my legs. Then I tried to hold her up in front of me between my skis. I could only do that for about 1 minute. After that one I had to sit down in the middle of the hill and take my skis and boots off. My feet hurt from barely moving so there wasn't any circulation getting down to my feet because my boots were so tight. (They're the kind of ski boots that you really have to move in and we moved ten feet in about 1/2 of an hour.) Then I saw a lady skiing backward and having her son hang onto her pole while she pulled and instructed him. So I tried that. That didn't work either. She just wasn't getting the concept. Luckily my sister Tiffani and her family was there because she showed me how to hold my poles under Sierra's arms with Sierra between my legs. That way I wasn't carrying all of her weight. So I tried that. It worked! She got the feel of it. Also, she is a little competitive. She doesn't like to feel like she's the one that can't do it. So it was really nice to have cousin Ashton there. Ashton has been skiing before and was doing it on her own about the third time down and when Sierra saw that, I could tell that it gave her incentive to do it on her own too. She was able to go down the hill by herself on the very last run. We were determined to let her get at least one run in by herself and the lift was closing. I thought they were going to stop the lift before we were going to get down. Then we would have had to hike up the hill. However, they waited for us. When we finally got down. We got on the lift and they turned off all the lights. SHE DID IT! IT WAS AWESOME! Needless to say, we are very proud of her, and my body is about to give out on me today, but it was all worth it. Sierra can ski.