White

A whole week at the snow, and being taken out of school to go! I have only had a week at the snow once, in the trip to Europe and the US before the girls were born, and it was so nice to have a break so soon after our last week off in July. The girls were also delighted at the prospect.
 
This year has been very bad for rain but another good year for snow, so there was heaps of it. It was very cold and raining a bit in Cooma when we stopped off to hire the skis and boots and in the flurry we left my hired boots on the counter – so had to hire some more at the snow. When we arrived at the ski lodge, one of the members suggested that the girls could do 20 laps of the building while we unpacked the car. They did 39, and we managed to wrestle their tired bodies and minds in to bed after a dinner of macaroni cheese a few hours later.
 
The ski lodge faces the mountain, which was magnificent white and more freshly so in the morning after further snowfall. The girls and I had two days of lessons in a row, which Lara and Rhea grumbled about but which enabled them to jump from level 3 to 3+ to 4 over just a few days, meaning that they graduated from the easiest hill to descending long, steep mountains with confidence.
 
Further to my distraction with the boots, on the second afternoon I realised that my credit card was missing and I must have dropped it. I cancelled the card and requested another. On swiping in to the chairlift the next morning the lift attendant asked me to wait while they rang the main office. It turned out that my credit card had been handed in and matched to my lift pass and the message was for me to come and collect it. I had cancelled my card too soon. Clever that they could give me a message through my lift pass though.
 
I found the lessons helpful and I too improved a lot after a few, though the instructions were also perplexing to me. ‘Make sure your shins are always touching your boots,’ said my first instructor, Luca, from Italy. ‘Are your tyres burning?’, he asked our group of six. ‘Why would my tyres be burning?’, I wondered, and I know English is probably your third or fourth language but what exactly is a shin?’ I was too embarrassed to ask (I checked with Steve afterwards) though I did work out that he was asking if our thighs were burning, which would be a bad thing, and in case you were wondering, no mine were not.
 
The second instructor talked about angles and forces and made me feel like I was in a physics class at school that I was struggling to understand. When he gave some basic guidance like ‘look a way down the hill’, ‘hold your arms out with your stocks almost touching your boots’ and ‘face down the hill sometimes, don’t be afraid of it’, that resonated more. For the first time, I think, over the sprinkling of weeks in total that I’ve skied in my life, each day ended without my shoulders aching. I wasn’t tense during the act of skiing and I enjoyed the moments that made up each day: the silence and peace swinging above the trees and looking at the clouds and white mountains in the chairlift rides, the sheer childish fun of sliding myself down hills, the sound of the skis and snowboards going swish and whoosh, and the enjoyable interlude of sitting down at lunch, indulging in good food and thirst-quenching cold water to the sound of party music surrounded by people enjoying their day. And that was all the more good to see the girls enjoy it too, and to spend that time with them while they were (mostly) happy (though see Tally on that below).
 
There were far more crowds on the weekend in last two days than the previous week, even though the week had involved the state championships; but though crowds mean more vigilance is needed, queues are longer for chairlifts and it’s not as peaceful, I did like to see the increasing diversity and hear languages other than English being spoken. The girls made another new friend at the ski lodge on the Saturday afternoon and we agreed to them having a sleepover in her room five minutes after having met her mother, which was the icing on the cake for Rhea and Lara. Lara took along her ice pack for her injured foot which she could hardly walk on for the previous two days, but could ski on with a foam insert.
 
Total tally over the seven days:
Jumps on ski jumps: approx. 40
Falls: approx. 40
Tantrums: approx. 28 (Lara thought 14)
Average length of time tantrumming: approx. 1 hour/ day
Child/teenage friends made: 5
Adult admirers of adorable twins: approx. 10
Showers taken by girls: 1 (NB: not each)
Firework displays watched: 1
Flair rides watched: 1
Servings of lasagna consumed: 8
Servings of spaghetti bolognaise consumed: 8
Ski lessons had: 11
Confident skiers: 4
Cars that failed to start on attempted departure: 1
Calls to the NRMA: 1
New Prime Ministers inaugurated: 1.