Ski School Is Over!

Today, Lia and Ron wrapped up seven Saturdays of heading up to the pass on a bus for Lia to take a morning ski lesson and spend the afternoon "skoarding" with Ron (Lia skiing and Ron snowboarding).  Overall, it turned out to be a wonderful experience with a rocky start.  Due to a massive amount of snow that fell the day before, their bus ended up getting turned around 10 miles from the ski resort on their first Saturday, January 11th.  Lia and Ron came home around 1 p.m. that afternoon after having spent over six hours on a bus with Lia's good friend, Elle, and a bunch of strangers.  Although their bus made it up to the mountain the next Saturday, January 18th, many things ended up going wrong.  I had to spend several hours on the phone over the next few days fixing out all of these problems.  After Ron, Lia, and Ella lost an hour in the morning having to walk to and from the lodge (which turned out to be over 30 minutes away from their ski school building) to get Lia's day pass and Elle's rental gear, the girls both missed the first hour of their two hour lesson.  In addition, Ron and Lia discovered after lunch that Elle was at a much lower snowboarding level than Lia was at skiing.  Originally, before I knew that Ron would be going with Lia every week, I had invited Elle to join Lia so that they could be skoarding buddies every Saturday after their morning lessons.  However, Elle was so low in her snowboarding abilities that she couldn't even get off the chair lift or board down the easiest, bunny hill.  It took Elle 35 minutes to board down the hill compared to Lia and Ron who could do it in less than five.  It became obvious very quickly that Elle needed her own buddy to snowboard with on Saturdays who was at her own ability level while Lia and Ron skoarded together at their own pace on more advanced runs. 
After contacting two different departments at the ski resort, I was able to get all of Lia's day passes refunded and purchase a season's pass at the discounted rate that had been available in the Fall.  In addition, after having the uncomfortable conversation with Elle's mom, they decided to start renting Elle's gear in Tacoma every Friday evening so that she would already have it when she arrived at the mountain.  They also made the surprising and wonderful decision to start having Elle's dad go up with her every week so that they could learn how to snowboard together.  I also got up the courage to call the ski school director and ask if Lia could have a second ski lesson during the afternoon the next Saturday to make up for the time that she missed during her first ski lesson (since the owner was the one who originally had told me that picking up weekly day pass every Saturday would be 'no big deal). 
So, after smoothing out all of these wrinkles, Lia was able to make the most out of her five remaining trips up to the pass on the ski bus.  She had a great time riding the bus and eating lunch every week with Elle.  She learned some valuable new skills from her lessons and had a great time skoarding with her dad after lunch every week.  She continued to improve in her skiing abilities and was skiing comfortably on 'blue runs' by the end of the 6-week session (which had been my original goal for Lia this season).  Due to the ski school needing to make up one lesson at the end of the session, Lia and Ron spent her birthday on the mountain today.  After Ron told the ski school director that it was her birthday, Lia was surprised to have most of the ski school sing "Happy Birthday" to her outside of the ski school building in the morning after first arriving.  That must have been something to hear that many people singing to her at once!  In addition, I sent up a special "Happy Birthday" sugar cookie for Ron to surprise her with at lunch.  Here are a few pictures Ron took of their last day of ski school today!

Lia and Elle riding up on the bus this morning.

The two girls standing in front of the Alpine West Ski School building.

Lia posing with the hilarious ski school director, Ron, who Lia and my Ron go to know pretty well during their hours of sitting next to him on the bus each week.

Lia skiing down to the bottom of the mountain after finishing up her morning lesson.

Lia showing off her birthday cookie from inside the bus.

Lia and daddy heading out for some afternoon skoarding.

Waiting to get on the ski lift.

Lia skiing down the run.

The birthday girl striking a funny pose.

And giving daddy a smile.

Ron and Lia heading back up the mountain on the chairlift.