Some Ski Days are Like That

If you think Max would look at the camera, you're wrong.

Is Cara smiling under there?

Huddled over in the lift line.

Kind of hard to see.

We haven't had a lot of snow this year. In fact, it's the end of January and I haven't had to shovel once. So when we got snow up in the mountains last Thursday and Friday, I couldn't wait to go skiing on Saturday. Steve got back from Thailand on Friday afternoon, so I decided to let him stay home with George and Leah. George had a gymnastics meet in the afternoon on Saturday. Steve was very helpful and loaded up the car for me Friday night. After it was all loaded, Sam informed me that he didn't want to go because he wanted to sleep in. Maybe he had some premonition or something, but I was just ticked because Steve had to unload the skis on the rack and reload them without Sam's skis. I checked the weather and it said it would rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains.

In the morning, I checked the weather again. Rain up until 11:00, with snow after that, 4 - 8 inches in Park City. I asked the kids if they wanted to go because it could be raining the whole time on the lower mountain which is where Max skis. Max was all dressed and excited. So we went. I told the girls if it was raining, they could take Max a few times while I waited in the car because I didn't want to waste my pass. The kids have season passes, but Steve and I just have 10 day passes. We got to Parley's summit and the rain was just turning to snow. We pulled into the resort with snow falling. It looked beautiful. I was very excited. Cara and Maddie were groaning. They said we wouldn't last long in this. But Max was ecstatic. He said he could go all day and he really wanted me to watch him go down the run. So I said, "Okay, let's go." When we got to the lift, it was coming down hard and fast, and the wind was blowing. On the way up, Max was complaining of the cold. The girls were just huddled down. We got to the top of the easy run and I told Max to show me his stuff. He tried to go, but there was so much powder he was going really slow. He kept complaining that he couldn't go. At the end of the run, I told them we would go again and Max would go down the faster route. He said he didn't want to, but I told him it would be slow because of all the powder. Cara started to go down with him. He fell repeatedly and was yelling that he wanted to go back to the car and he wished he had never come. I told him tough. He wanted to go back to the car and eat lunch. I forced him to get on the lift again. He was yelling the whole time and saying he wished he had a different mom.

So it was 10:40 and we stopped for lunch. Max wouldn't let me talk to him in the car. He preferred that I didn't talk at all, but I told him that wasn't an option. The snow was really coming down hard now. Cara wanted the radio and heater on. She said she would stay with Max while I went skiing with Maddie. I gave her some money to go to the lodge if she wanted to. I told her to turn the radio and heat off because I wanted the car to start later. Me and Maddie went out again. It was snowing so hard that when we opened the door to the car, snow poured in. We tried to get our gear on without getting snow all over us. Maddie's poles were buried in the time it took us to eat. We walked to the lift. We rode the little lift to Payday lift. Our intent was to go up to Bonanza lift. While on Payday, we huddled together and held our mittens over our faces. The wind and snow had definitely picked up during lunch. While freezing, Maddie said through her face mask, sarcastically, "Ah, this is the life, right Mom?" I laughed and said, "Maybe we should just get down the mountain and go home." We were freezing and we couldn't see. On the way down, Maddie said she could never make it if she hadn't done that run before. The snow covered all the direction signs and we couldn't see far in front of us. It was too cold to take our mittens off and clear goggles. We got down to the lodge and headed to the bathroom. I got a text from Cara saying she had seen us walk by, but didn't know where we were. My phone lost service right after that and I couldn't get a hold of her.

Meanwhile, Cara had been having a lovely time with Max. She was freezing in the car so talked him into going to the lodge with her to get hot chocolate. They walked through the blizzard to the lodge while Max was yelling the whole time, "Why are we doing this? We should have stayed in the car. This is too cold." When they got to the lodge, Cara realized she had forgotten the money. Max flipped out and demanded that she go back and get it. Cara unwilling to leave Max alone, said, "Wait, Mom might be here. Let me call her."

I finally got service and when Cara answered the phone, she could barely hear me. I quickly said (afraid of losing service again), "Cara, meet us in the car now. We need to go." So Cara got off the phone and told Max that they had to go back to the car. He yelled, at the top of his lungs, "WHAT???" Everyone turned to stare. Cara quickly escorted Max out of the building. On the way back to the car, Max was yelling at her, "I think I hate you more than I hate Mom! Wait, I do hate you more than I hate Mom!" They beat us to the car because Maddie and I were trying to carry our equipment in a blizzard. We both fell down hard, but got up. When we got to the car, I immediately started taking boots off and loading the ski rack. Cara was listening to the radio. I turned on the windshield wipers to clear the dash. I couldn't get the skis loaded because it was snowing so hard that I couldn't get the racks to close. Finally I did it. I grabbed the scraper and started doing all the windows, all while Max was screaming about no hot chocolate.

Then I jumped in the car and turned the key. No response. Tried again. Jumped out of the car and found someone with jumper cables, but my car was sandwiched in between all the other cars. There was no way he could get to me. So I went to find help. I went to the ticket office and she told me the parking lot attendants could help me. So I walked uphill in the blizzard to talk to them. The first attendant told me he didn't have jumper cables and to talk to his boss. I went to the boss and he said he couldn't help and tow trucks had a two hour back up at the moment. I told him I would have to sleep in the parking lot. He asked if someone could help jump us and I said no because I had parked the car like his attendants had instructed me to. He said he was sorry. So I started walking back to the car. I prayed and got in. Max was crying. I tried again and success. So I shut down all unnecessaries like heat and wipers and tried to back up. It was impossible. I put the car in 4 wheel drive. It went a little and then got stuck. I put the car in 4 wheel high. It went a little more and got stuck. I had to rock the car back and forth along with everyone else who was trying to leave. Finally we made it and the kids breathed a little easier. I told them we had our own little miracle. That pacified Max enough to keep him from yelling the rest of the way home. When we got home, he still would not talk to me.

They had 182 slide offs yesterday on I-80, we are so glad we weren't one of them. And Park City got 19 inches of snow in a few hours. We got to see it all. And yes, I did waste a day of my 10-pack pass, but hey, it's not like I've never wasted money before.