Friday, February 3, 2012

Our First Family Ski Trip

Although Brian, Josh and I have all skied, we have never skied together. It is something we have always wanted to do, we just haven't taken the opportunity. While we live in Europe, it seems silly not to, so we scheduled a ski trip with a local ski club that started the day after Christmas. The nice thing about the trip is that ski lessons were included for everyone. Brian is a good skier and wasn't sure he needed the lessons, but in the end decided he learned a lot and was glad he did them. Since I hadn't skied since my senior year of high school (just a couple years ago, right?!) I was happy to be doing lessons. Josh went skiing a few times on youth trips and would have a day lesson but he really enjoyed not only having the lessons but having a full week to ski! Ian and Ellie were in classes, too. Ian picked it right up - must be all that ice skating! Ellie learned to snow plow and even went down the mountain with us one day! She was worn out at the end of each day, though, and usually fell asleep in the car on the way back to our hotel (a mere 10 minutes away). We had a great week and really enjoyed our time. Since we were all in separate ski classes, we did take the last day of skiing to have us all (minus Ellie) ski together in my ski class because we decided it was a happy medium for all of us and my instructor, Paul, was a nice guy and let us do it. We had met another family at our hotel and the wife (Gretchen) was in my class, the husband (Jerry) was in Brian's class and their boys were in Ian's class and they, too, skied as a family in my class the last day. It was a great way to wrap up the week on our Family ski trip (otherwise we were apart most of the day). Here is a picture of Brian and I on our first morning on the slopes - right before we got put into our classes! This is a picture of me while on lunch break with my class. The views were amazing! This is a picture of the view from our room at the hotel (Gasthaus) we were staying in. Enjoying the sunset from our room. The first two days of skiing were beautiful! We were running a little late for our classes the second day due to traffic getting up the mountain and Brian and I were unable to find our classes. We decided just to enjoy some time skiing together and see if we could find our classes at lunch time.





We were able to get a picture together at lunch right before we left to join our separate classes.


Here's a picture of Brian and Ellie as they were coming down one of the sloepw together. I love Ellie's expression. This picture is of the kids watching a Tim Hawkins video on Ian's iTouch he got for Christmas. I love seeing my kids having fun together! This is a picture of a well-known restaurant on the mountain that serves donuts - either savory or sweet. They were delicious!


Here's a picture of the family waiting for our donuts to arrive! Here's a picture of me with the donuts Brian and I were sharing! Josh with his donuts. Ian with his. Here's a family picture of us on the slopes. It was cold - hence the reason I look like a pink stay puff marshmallow man! I took this picture of Josh outside the place we had our award ceremony for our ski classes. Ellie got a silver medal for her class. She did have other kids in the class they just weren't at the ceremony).


Ian got the gold medal for his class. For some reason the boy standing on the podium with him thought he'd gotten the gold, too, and wouldn't get down.


Yes, I actually got the gold in my class too - beating even the young ones that got silver and bronze!


New Year's Eve the village we were staying in had a little fire works display and celebration in the town center. We stayed for the fire works then left because it was dinner time and it was snowing a wet snow that was soaking us!


Here we are on New Year's Eve with the family I mentioned earlier. Our tables were right next to each other and we chatted every night. It was fun having another family to hang out with!





The kids would hang out in the stair well near the dining room with the iPad and play games because it had a better Internet connection there!


It really was a great trip and was hard to come home to see the whirlwind of Christmas still in the living room since Christmas seemed so long ago at that point! We are already thinking about and planning for another ski trip we enjoyed it so much. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sankt Veit, Austria

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