Ski Season 2014

We had a blast skiing this year.  Luke and Seth are improving so much, and we got Ian up there quite a few times too.  Leah was ready this year, but I wasn't!  It's too hard to help her and Ian at the same time, so we held her off until next year.  She did head up there with us a few times though and seemed pretty excited about the whole thing.  Luke truly loved skiing this year and was always excited to go.  It was a crazy winter with really bad snow at times, but it turned out to be pretty fun.

The Snyders stayed overnight with us in January, and we took the bigger kids and hit the slopes.  The kids skied hard all day, and we had such a blast!

 

Jer and I even found a Saturday with tons of new snow to go skiing without kids.  It was quite the crazy day that began with a traffic jam waiting to get in the canyon after an avalanche.  The snow was deep and heavy, and I found out just how out of shape I was this winter!

 My dad came and joined us for a Saturday at the Beav.  The snow was bad, but the day was lots of fun.

I took Luke up the day of his 4th grade ski trip.  I kept encouraging him to ski with his friends, which he did part of the time, but we also skied just the two of us for most of the day.  I took Luke on lots of runs he had never been on before, and we both loved having some time to hang out together.

Another snowy, awesome snow day at the Beav brought an interesting experience.  The boys were in a lesson so Jer and I went off the back with Travis Seeholzer.  He had his camera and was taking some pictures.  As we got close to Spring Road I slowed up and Jer flew by spraying snow all over my goggles.  He was hauling!  By the time I wiped my goggles off and looked down the hill he had flown past the road and was in a tree well.  I didn't think tons of it until he called to me for help.  I skied down and could see Travis had stopped too.  Apparently he wasn't paying attention and didn't see the road until the last second so then he made a quick turn to try and make it but at that rate of speed he slammed full force into a huge tree.  He broke the rim off his helmet and blacked out for a few seconds.  I took of my skis and helped him get his board off.  Once Travis, who actually saw the impact, was convinced Jer was alive he snapped a few shots for posterity.  I need to get my hands on those!  It was pretty scary.  If he had hit it full face or with head down it easily could have broken his neck.  The side of his face and his shoulder and arm took the brunt of the impact.  His shoulder and wrist put him out of commission until just recently and he had two nice black eyes to show for it but luckily that was the worst of it.  We were both grateful it ended the way it did.

 
 I took the boys up a few more times after Jer's shoulder ended his season early.

Luke and Seth ended the season by skiing a day with grandpa at Snow Basin.  They had so much fun!  They were super impressed by the fancy lodge and bathrooms and Seth said it was "the coolest place ever!"