mini skiers

Since it's already OFFICIALLY spring (why in the world was it snowing this morning?!), it's only right that I should post these wintry pictures of Bran and Nuala skiing. Look how pretty the drive up the mountain to their ski school was. And it was even prettier after fresh snow.

They took 5 days of classes, about 4 hours a day, with an hour for lunch. They were pooped. They were the only two little English speaking students that week, so they had their own private class. That was a fiasco. The office lady was giving us the "group class" rate since we didn't request private classes, even though you had to have three kiddos to qualify. The group rate is significantly less than private lessons. As in, 5 days of group lessons was about the same price as 2 days of private lessons. It was really, really fun to work out since the office lady hadn't informed the money-taking lady what the deal was. And when the money-taking lady heard the deal, she wasn't thrilled. We didn't even know we were getting the group vs. private rate. She had just told us how much we were to pay and when I tried to pay it... bleh. It worked out, though, after many, many phone calls.

They had a nice young fellow, Martin, as their instructor. A Bulgarian, but he spoke perfect English, and actually had lived in Ireland for a little while. In fact, he's about to move back there, to Mullingar, very close to where my mom's from and where most of her fam still lives. We always go to church there when we're visiting. Small world.

This bear statue along the road up the mountain is a favorite of theirs. Without fail, they ALWAYS ask for the story of Medusa. I could spit that out in my sleep. Bran was worried at first that the bear had fallen victim to the snakey-haired lady and was relieved to find that wasn't the case. I don't think it is anyway... ;)

The first day of their class I got stuck in a snow drift after dropping the tykes off. Lame. Luckily a couple of nice ladies who had been dogsledding hooked me up to their Subaru and pulled my big ol' Explorer right outta there.

Their last day, Z took off work so he could spend the whole time with them.

They had to bend down and touch their skis to help keep everything in line... stay low and centered...

Then they could stand up and stick their little arms straight out. Like zombie skiers.

Cool dudes. Nuala had a huge crush on Martin. She told me she wanted to marry him. Unfortunately for her, she also overheard me relay that to him. Oops. Apparently she's old enough to be embarrassed by revelations like that, but still young enough to quickly forget.

Walking sideways up the hill. Nuala's a toughie. One day, when they both were super whiny about staying because of a crazy-morning-getting-out-and-Martin-couldn't-be-there-and-the-new-instructor-couldn't-find-their-boots/skis-that-we-had-left-and-they-had-to-use-the-school's, etc., etc., I ended up hanging out for a while. Nuala un-whinied herself and charged right in... tromping up the hill, going down, tromping back up again. Bran did not. He was plain old lazy. He would head up the hill and then collapse, as Nuala zipped past him.

Finally I had to ditch, to huge screams from Bran. Huge, blood-curdling, irrational screams. It was most awesome. I watched the little heads of almost all the other children (two big buses full of them...and a small bus) swivel around to see what the heck was happening to the little American boy. I felt sorry for their instructor for the day, but she was a trooper and I knew he'd suck it up once I was gone. And he did.

Making a "pizza slice" with her skis. They (even Bran, despite his ski-laziness) were actually pretty good little skiers. They definitely got their fill of it for the year, though.

It's a tough life. I went to pick them up one day and only found Bran and Martin frolicking in the snow. Apparently there was a lot of frolicking. Something about short attention spans? ;) Anyway, turns out Nuala had started to fall asleep lying in the snow, so Martin took her back to the buildings and she was snoozing away in a ski instructor's bed. When we all trooped in to collect her, she woke up but pretended to still be asleep and heard Martin call her "Sleeping Beauty." You can bet that was a highlight of her day.

Here's a long video that Z put together of their skiing exploits. I think overall they enjoyed ski school, though they don't want to go back anytime soon.

Nuala and Bran at Ski School from Fiona Rollins on Vimeo.