We finally got around to introducing our boys on the slopes. Like many great adventures, it was a happy little accident of sorts, but it has opened a new chapter of winter fun for our family.
We live a few hours away from the Wisconsin Dells, where they have a ridiculous amount of indoor (and outdoor) water parks. Our family has really come to enjoy our little getaways up north, especially because they tend to have great deals in the winter time when no one is thinking about going to a water park. At the end of February, we decided to take a little family trip before my wife and the boys headed out to Texas for a few weeks. As luck would have it, our package included lift tickets for one day at a nearby ski resort. We decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and the day before we left, we got the boys the first snow boarding lesson.
Honestly, I expected our excursion to last half-a-day and then we’d head back to the water park to finish out the day. I was happily proven wrong. We stayed so long that the lights for the night skiing had come on before we were ready to get off the hill. If we had better gloves for the boys, we might have closed the place down. Needless to say the whole ride back to the hotel was filled with conversation about when we’d be able to go again. It had me recalling the first day I went skiing… all I could think about was when I would get my next chance to go on my ride back home.
In the two weeks before the big Texas adventure began, there was quite a bit of chatter about when our next snowboarding adventure would be. Knowing we had one open weekend before they left, my wife and I kept our eyes open for an opportunity to get the kids back out there on the snowboard mountains. We lucked out with a LivingSocial deal for a Ski Area 15 mins from where we live. Yeah, I know we live in Chicagoland, and there are no mountains… Nevertheless this ski area was perfect for a couple of preteen newly minted snowboarders. Enough of a hill to get some good practice, and not so challenging that it became discouraging.
Before this year I had been on a 10-year hiatus (give-or-take a year) from the slopes… In fact, I had even donated my old skis to goodwill… I wasn’t sure if I’d be headed back to the slopes…. (after-all we had been living in Southern California for about 4 years at that time and it is not really known for its skiing…) It hadn’t seemed like snow sports were in our future, add to that our move to the midwest seemed to validate that… I mean you don’t really associate skiing with the flat-lands of the Midwest… Happily I have been proven wrong. Now that I have to get new gear for myself I may just take up snowboarding too. (My boys have already volunteered to teach me.) Either way I’d say our little family has just begun to explore the world of snow sport adventures!
(Originally posted on Diarydad.com)