First Ski Race of the Season

I always look forward to weekends. After a long week with the early morning arrival of daycare kids, it's nice to have a day to sleep in. My own kids usually sleep until 8 or 8:30, sometimes later, and we enjoy a nice, slow morning.

Well, that only happens when the six year old isn't anticipating an exciting day. This morning we were awakened at 7:20 am, with a blood-curdling scream. Unable to imagine what the problem was, we were jumping out of our skin, until he yelled, "Spider!!!" UGH. We still had some hope of going back to sleep until we heard the two year old, whom the six year old had awakened and removed from his crib. As the six year old came running to our room, for a cure to the spider issue, I told him to kill it. "But I don't have shoes on!" So I told him to get one from the front entry and hit the spider. Much banging and clanging occurred, followed by, "AAA - It's coming after me!" Then we heard the two year old repeat, "Spider, coming... spider!" Eventually the six year old jubilantly cried, "I got it!" which was followed by the two year old celebrating, "I got it! I got it!" At this point we were laughing so hard we couldn't possibly go back to sleep.

Once we got up the six year old wanted to head to the ski hill immediately. His race started at 1 pm and he didn't want to be late :) After he kept pestering us to go, we finally told him to look at the clock. It wasn't even 8 am yet.

Finally we made it up to the ski hill. He really was much more excited than this picture shows. I have ordered a new camera, but it didn't make it in time for the race, so you're stuck with my crummy pictures taken with my phone.

The kids listed 13-18 were his competition. He greatly improved his time over last year, but didn't finish as high as he hoped. When we were getting him all ready to go race, I asked him if he wanted me to clip his goggles and lift ticket (which is on a lanyard) into the snap on his helmet like we usually do. He told me I should definitely do that because he was going to be going so fast that they might blow off. He was really focused on staying tucked down the whole way down, and did a great job at it. He told me he thought he must have finished in first because he stayed tucked the whole way. So he was pretty disappointed in fourth place. But he had a great attitude about it, and said he had done his best and had a good time, which is what we had told him to focus on before hand.

My sorry phone did a horrible job capturing photos. Another parent said she took pictures of each of the kids and offered to email us copies of ours, so hopefully I'll be able to add that to the blog when I get it. In this picture, he's clear up at the top of the course, toward the upper left side of the photo.

He's closer here - coming around a gate. He's hard to see because he was lined up with the blue gate in this one, but that's the closest picture I have. Unfortunately I forgot how long the phone takes to save photos. These pictures are from the two runs he took.

Again, at the top of the course.

This was the award ceremony. We were up on a balcony at the time. He is standing under the first American flag on the left, receiving his award - a large red cowbell. Everyone got the same thing, and all the kids get called up to the front, which is nice. I'm not one of those parents who think kids should be shielded from disappointment, and that sports events should not have losers. I think there is a lot to be learned about how to handle disappointment. We encouraged him to do his best and didn't put any emphasis on winning. He had a good time and is looking forward to practicing for the other race of the year, which will be on March 12.

Now off to bed. And here's hoping there are no more spiders in the house :)