Nate Tries Skiing

Yesterday we told Nate that when the sun went down, then the sun come up and we'd go skiing. So, after the second night in a row of sleeping the whole night in his own room (Yeah!) he came in to our bedroom at 6:15am and said sun is up let's go skiing. And that began our day. We woke, ate breakfast, packed, got dressed in our ski gear and headed up the mountain to Soda Springs. For $25 they have an all day snow park, with inner tubes, a little ski run and an inner tube merry go round thing.

We arrived around 10am, got his ticket and made the trek over to the snow park. He got his little ski's and snow boots, no poles and we headed over to see what his first day of skiing was going to be like.
Not much for having instructors there, it was very much parent interaction and involvement. I asked one of the folks who worked there how to begin. She sat down in front of Nate and told him to bend his knees, lean forward and if he wanted to stop, make a big slice of pizza with his ski's. Nate went about a foot, she stopped him, he did it again and I said I'd help him the rest of the way down the mountain. We did two runs down the hill like that, the second, I was running backwards down the hill while he chased me. By the third time, he told me to get out of his way and he went down all by himself. That was it, after that he was hooked and couldn't get enough. He went down about 6 or 7 more times before he wanted to stop and eat. We'd packed hot chocolate, sandwiches and some snacks and made a little picnic in the snow.
Afterwords a few more ski runs before we went over to do the tubing. At the tubing place, Nate saw a snowman, so we built our first snow man, but he destroyed it before we could get too many pictures.

We then played in the fresh area of the snow, rolled down the mountain and had a great time. He then wanted to get back to skiing and we went for another 10 runs or so before we finally called it a day. We could tell he was getting tired and started to fall/crash into other skiers. It didn't stop him, barely slowed him down. He wanted to stay, but I felt it was time for us to leave. We headed back down the hill and was home around 4. He slept most of the way home and when we got there, while we were tired, he was ready to go play.

I took him out back to play catch with Lilo and decided to turn on the spa for us to relax in. While playing catch, Nate kept going to check the front yard to see if our neighbors, and his new posse were playing out front. Sure enough, Jake, Logan, Jimmy and Emily gathered for their afternoon biking session. Nate wanted to join in, so we went out front and played for 1bout an hour and a half. When the other kids went inside for dinner, I grabbed Nate, we went home and put on our swim trunks and hooped into the spa. We through the ball to Lilo, so she went swimming in the cold pool, while we hung out in the spa. Everyone ran inside, we took a shower, ate dinner and I read him stories while he quickly fell asleep. I have to believe there was not much else we could have crammed into what must have been an almost perfect day for Nate. All the things he loved, he was able to do in a single day.
Tomorrow Nate is going to Nene's house and is going to spend the day with Claudia. It'll be good for the kids to hang out together. Maria is thinking of trying to arrange a more frequent rotation with them so we can give each other more time and give the kids regular play sessions. Maria's even thinking she might volunteer to take Claudia some days to give Nate someone else to interact with, hoping to make it easier on her.