Ascending to Heaven

Dad and Lex were going skiing on Saturday, and when they called and invited me (and Dad offered to pay for my ticket), I totally jumped on the opportunity. I needed a break from life. :) And I hadn't gone in two years!! Ben is the sweetest man in the WORLD to stay at home with the kids while I went and played for a day. What a babe he is.

Two years ago, when my family went during Christmas, Natalie and I sucked it up. I don't know what was happening, but she and I could not handle it! We were huffing and puffing, and after two runs, we were ready to call it a day. I would have chalked it up to me being 20 pounds heavier then, but then what's Nat's excuse? She's never oveweight. Maybe having flown up from San Diego? Maybe it was the drastic change in altitude? But Nat didn't come from San Diego, so I don't know. Maybe it's just the exhaustion of having kids in your life.

So I was a little nervous about how I would do, but luckily, I wasn't huffing and puffing too badly, and my technique easily found me again. Like riding a bike! It was a really good day of skiing. We skied long and hard, and there was fantastic snow. I kept thinking that I really wished Dylan was there, so that I could teach him. Ben will probably insist upon teaching Dylan the devilish ways of snowboarding, instead of the graceful ways of skiing. I wish we had the fundage to teach Dylan to ski/snowboard. Maybe someday.

It was a coooooooold day. With wind chill, it was -1. Brrrr. It's a good thing that Dad insisted upon me wearing long johns and another layer underneath the parka and ski pants. Usually, that makes me too hot, but in this case, it was perfect. Poor Lexi got really cold, so she was going to run to the car - well, "run" isn't the right word to use when you're talking about ski boots. Let me rephrase that. She was going to stump to the car to get some more snow pants, but Dad is like, "No, no, let me go." He is such a caretaker. So he ran down and got her some snow pants. And then I was wearing Mom's ski boots and ski socks, and they were rubbing me wrong - I was getting rubbed raw on my inner ankles - so I was going to go buy some moleskin from the little shop there, and Dad is like, "No, you stay here. I'll go." And then he had to trek around to look for scissors. Lex was like, "Look at us. We're 31 and 21 years old, and our daddy is still taking care of us." Dad is really quite the nurturer.

Despite all of the things I was wearing to cover up, my nose/lips/chin area was exposed, and now it's totally chapped. I could hardly talk all day - my face was totally frozen!!

And, of course, it being Grand Targhee, it was foggy at the top. Sometimes it's so foggy that you can't see the difference between the snow and the air, so your center of balance gets messed up and you just keep falling. When you ride the chair lift to the top, the higher you go, the denser the fog gets. The girls and I joke that we are ascending to heaven. There have only been a handful of times in my entire life that Targhee has been clear at the top.

But the snow was fantastic, and it felt soooo good to ski hard and fast. And it was just fun to joke around with Dad and Lex. Riding on the chair lift, so many skiing memories came flooding into my mind. Some of my best times have been when I was skiing.

This is Pooh, Em, Cecily, and me at the top of Targhee. On a clear day, you would see the Grand Tetons right there behind us. But it wasn't a clear day that day. Of course.

Before heating pads for fingers and toes were invented, my friend Emily and I were in ski lessons for a few years while growing up. As soon as we got on the lift, we could yell, "Toe time!!!" And we would spend the whole time on the lift wiggling our toes and fingers inside our boots and mittens to try to get them warm.

This is Nat, me, and Em on the way home from skiing at Big Sky. There is nothing better than to sit in a nice warm car after a day of hard skiing and go to sleep. And I always pull my neckie up. It's nice to get the hair out of the face:

We would ride up with Em's dad, who always parked illegally. He was a very elegant skier. He would always say, over and over, "You can conquer any mountain in a series of turns."

Another picture from Big Sky; eating lunch outside:

One day, during ski lessons, it was so windy that the chairs were tipping way back, which means that we were about to fall off the chairs. We were screaming and holding on to the chair with all our might. Ah, good times.

My very first pair of skis:

I remember a guy in our ski class didn't have proper protection, and he was chubby and wore too small of a coat (Fat Guy in a Little Coat!! - from the movie, Tommy Boy), and his chubby tummy was hanging out of his coat, and it was bright red from the cold. And he had no hat or mittens, so his hands and ears were also bright red. Poor kid.

Me, Nat, Beads, and Mom:

We would always get hot chocolate after lessons, and I remember always hearing the song "Sail Away," by Enya in the lodge. And that dang hot chocolate burnt my tongue every Saturday, no matter how long I waited before sipping on it.

Me, Beads, Lex, Mom, and Nat:

When my family would go skiing together, Brianna had this thing where she loved to ski in the trees. That girl has no fear.

Me:

Once, we were skiing in Jackson, and Dad was skiing on the smaller hill with Lex. Mom, Nat, Beads and I went on a run called Rendezvous. It was very foggy and cold, and the run was extremely steep. And it had frozen into one huge, huge ice block! A very steep ice block! We thought we were going to die. I think Mom and Nat tried to "conquer it in a series of turns," which was brave of them, because you'd turn and then dig with all your might into the hill with your ski edges to keep from sliding to your death. I was like, no. No turns. So I sideslipped the entire mountain. It took me like an hour. I'm not joking. Brianna, early on, was like, screw this. So she just pointed her skis straight down the hill and bombed it! Then she lay at the bottom and waited for us. People kept passing her and asking if she was okay. She was like, "Yeah, I'm just waiting for my family." That was so funny. And scary.

Here we are, spring skiing. We decided, since it was so warm, to ski in jeans. Never again, my friends. Never again. The jeans bunch up in your boots and bruise your shins. I learned my lesson:

Nat and I used to sing INXS songs on the lift.

The following picture shows me and Em. See? Now this is what you should be able to see at the top of Targhee - the tetons, right there across a ravine. Hence the orange rope:

Lexi's favorite run at Targhee is called Alley Oop Alley. It's soooo much fun. Just a bunch of huge, huge bumps. You can get some pretty sweet air if you get going fast enough. Dad biffed it on that one time - he got going too fast.

Em, Nat, and me:

So. When I was seven, Mom and Dad took me for my first time to go skiing. We went to Kelly's. I lost control and ran into a ski lift pole, and I had this horrible pain in my knee. I cried and cried, but my parents thought I was faking it because I really just was cold and scared. So they made me ski on it all day. Turns out I had sprained my knee! I skied on a sprained knee all day long! I still give them crap about that.

Which is maybe why I used to hate to ski, until I was, like, in high school. I always felt nervous and thought to myself, "Do I really feel like doing this?" I always ended up having fun, but it wasn't until I was older when the jittery feeling went away. And now I love it. I have decided that heaven (if I get there) needs to have lakes for waterskiing and mountains for skiing. And Ben and Jerry's yellow cake batter ice cream with chocolate frosting swirls.