sucker!

My beloved and I have been looking forward to this ski season, not for the snow, fresh air, or vertical feet.

We have THREE boys in a locals' ski program this year.

TEN Saturdays.

NINE a.m. until THREE p.m.

For a homeschooling family, this is bliss.  I am with my boys all week, so it is no problem for me to ship them off to ski with excellent instructors for six hours at a time.

PLUS, this is the first year that it hasn't been an overwhelming favor to ask of a friend to watch our angelic little Squirt for a few hours so we can ski together.

OR, my beloved and our crazy friends can drag my butt all over the forbidden parts of our mountain.

May I show you the illustrated version, compliments of my crappy Blackberry phone camera?

Allrightythen.

First off, my husband informed me that the chairlift is actually farther to the left in the trees than my photo shows, but I'm lazy and didn't feel like re-doing the picture.

You get the idea.  We took Jupiter lift up and skied that little hill down.  Then, all in the name of fun, we took our skis off and hiked UP.

About 45 minutes later I joined all the in shape people Kenyon, Pete, and Deb at the top of Pinecone Ridge.

Below are the crazy lunatics that convinced me that this was going to be fun (Kenyon, Deb, and Pete).  I think Deb just likes having another girl hiking with her, but I think she's cool for keeping up with the boys.

Or, she's just happy about the nice nap she had time to take while waiting for me to hike my sorry butt up the mountain.

I realized at this point that all three of them are sales people in the business world and I felt like I got sold a bill of goods.  They are out of my league!

The BAD NEWS was that the snow conditions were sub-par.  To be blunt, it was like navigating skis through thick ice cream.  We all took a few tumbles amidst all our laughter.

The WORSE NEWS is that my posse did not know where in the heck they were going and we found ourselves in a THICK aspen forest.  See Pete disappearing into the trees?

No path, no room, no fun.

In the end, I was a sweaty, sore, frustrated, skeptical woman with broken branches sticking out of my helmet and snow packed down my pants.

We were half an hour late picking up Squirt at Jenny's house.  You can go here to see what she did to fill the time.

Now, if our little ski town would just get about two feet of fresh pow pow, I'll try it again.

With a trail map.