Our Snow Bunny Family

Steve has been skiing since college at the Air Force Academy and although I took some lessons as a kid, none of what I learned came back to me when Steve took me skiing ten years ago in Austria. I really needed a lesson from a professional instructor. What I got was a “you can do this!” and a lift ticket to the top of the mountain. There was some decent instructing on his part, a lot of cursing on my part, but I’d never really say that I actually skied. I did toughed it out for 2 days though and on day 3 refused to ski, let my snow bunny dreams disappear while I got a massage for my sore and useless ski legs. Day 4 I went shopping and forgot about the whole thing.

 

Fast forward a decade, we live 30 minutes from a decent ski resort and just a few hours away from some of the best skiing in the world. I’m not getting any younger (or fitter) so I decided that now was the time but only after an awful lot of convincing from Steve and another squadron family we were going to tag along with. It also helped tremendously that our friend, Casey, was a ski instructor during his college days! Day one he had Brian and I and his kids on the bunny slopes. Day two I was skiing from the very top of the mountain, no blacks yet, but I feel like I did a good job. Oh, also I rented skiboards, which are like skis, only much shorter. My skiboards were shorter than Brian’s skis! They are easier to turn but trickier to balance on than regular skis. I only fell a few times and had a blast. Brian took a lesson the next day and loved it! He keeps asking when his next ski lesson is! Sadly, at the end of day two, we returned home to news that my Grandpa had passed away that morning. Within days, Steve had lined up leave to stay with the kids and I was off to California by myself. Steve took advantage of his time off to get Emily out skiing a few days. She loved it too and we are looking forward to getting her in lessons next year and skiing as a family all over Europe! Steve and Casey also tore up the powder at a resort called Nassfeld on the border of Austria one day and we have leads on a few more resorts close by to keep up busy until the snow melts.