Skiing at Lake Louise

Now that Hudson and Maira can ski without falling down constantly, we decided to try skiing in the mountains on a real ski hill instead of the small ones around Edmonton.

We picked Lake Louise (partly because they're the only resort in the mountains that offers a family pass for lift tickets and partly because we'd never been there, winter or summer, and it's famous for being so beautiful). We were excited to see that there are dozens of green runs as none of us is a very adventurous skiier so the more green runs the better!

Well, it turns out that their idea of a green run involves a lot steeper inclines than anything Maira or Hudson could handle so we ended up spending a lot more time in the kids area (which was great for Hudson and Maira but still pretty boring for the rest of us) than I had expected. I went on one run up the mountain with Maira on what was supposed to be the easiest run on the whole mountain. Well, she ended up having a melt down about halfway down because the steep areas really scared her so she was happy to stick to the kids area after that. I did take her and Hudson up the gondola but we didn't get off at the top to ski, we just rode it back down to the bottom. We did that while we were waiting for Jess and Shae and Connor to get back from exploring the back side of the mountain. They were supposed to see if any of the green runs on the back were less steep but they ended up taking a wrong lift and making some wrong turns and they were gone for 2 hours! They had quite an adventure and ended up on a blue run part of the time but they survived and have quite the experience to remember!

Winter Wonderland

Edmonton was bombarded by a huge snowstorm last week and while Jess and I were out shoveling the piles and piles of snow off of our driveway, the kids came outside too to play in our little winter wonderland.

We bought bunk beds for Connor and Maira this week and these are the boxes their beds came in - they made a perfect fort for Connor to play in.

Here's a view of my lovely garden I blogged about this past summer, to show how much snow we've got. Those are my peas, almost completely buried now. Hard to believe I'll be planting new veggies in this garden in 4 months!

Shae loves to ski, she learned how by going to her school's ski club every winter since Grade 2. We try and go skiing at our little river valley ski hill here in Edmonton at least once a year and we've been taking Connor along with us since he was 3 1/2 but this is the first year that he really got the hang of it and therefore really enjoyed himself. He looks like he's about to fall down in this picture of me and him skiing down the baby hill but he's doing fine.

Here is a short movie of him skiing, first down the baby hill and then on a much steeper hill which we've never allowed him on before for fear that he would just try going straight down and end up breaking his neck - so this was a big accomplishment for him to go down this hill, even if he did have Jess' help the whole way! (That's Shae in the pink coat partway up the hill, beside the stranded snowboarder).

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