Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Ski bums and little bums

It was 10 feet of snow, 5 little kids, and a cabin full of parents who are more than happy to be 'out of town' for a holiday.

Powder King Ski Bum Retreat!

My sister Lisamaire and her husband David are skiers- hard core skiers. Lisa is a woman who, after giving birth to a whopping 9lb.10oz baby ( very cute by the way) can fly down the mountain ( out of bounds) only 8 weeks after she popped him out.
Their son Ivor strapped on skis for the weekend ( at the age of 2) and 8 week old Grayson had a rare foot anomaly where he was actually born with skis attached to his feet.

Needless to say, we were thankful for this ski bum family to invite our family and my brother's family to get off our bums and get together.


We all met up at Powder King ski hill outside of PrinceGeorge BC. It was a central meeting grounds for all of us. Lisa's family came down from Grande Prarie, we had an equal distance drive from the west, and Jeff and his family made their way from Prince George.


Josh and I arrived at the cabin first, and the GrandPrarie ski bums arrived about an hour later. Ava was more than thrilled to see her cousin Ivor. They are only 2 weeks apart in age and kept themselves busy together for the whole weekend...very, very, busy.


Josh pulled out the super-dad card right away and sent me out the door to ski with David. We skied for the rest of that afternoon, getting to know the hill and steal some of that great untouched powder that this place is known for.


Now, David is a strong skier, and I ( Laura) have taken up telemark skiing ( aka- misery sticks) I really do enjoy this type of skiing, but it really really burns the quads...just imagine doing deep lunges all the way down a mountain. Needless to say, when we finished our day, I hobbled up the stairs of our cabin- legs shaking like they had 8 shots of espresso in them , and collapsed on the couch with a very important thing from the fridge: beer. I decided then and there that I was going to alpine ski for the rest of the weekend so I could survive. No more rock'n in the free-heeled world for this girl for a few days.


Lisa cooked supper - a pizza for a 5pm appetizer and after the kids went to bed we had good old dutch 'stumpot' ( Mashed potatoes with kale, served with Ukrainian sausage, mustard and lots of butter)


We all had a pretty good night's sleep and after some bacon and eggs Josh and David hit the slopes. I was on a mission to get the 2 year olds out side, and did we ever play. The snow piles on either side of the cabin 'drive way' were 10 feet high. We dug snow caves, made snow slides-with snow stairs, had a snow tea party in our snow house and even took the sleds to the hills and did some crazy tobogganing. All in all- they were quite worn out and ready for lunch and a nap. Jeff and Jenn arrived Saturday morning too. Part our our morning outside excitement was uncle Jeff chucking the kids to the top of the snow banks.


That afternoon a rare thing happened. The 3 siblings hit the slopes together- something that we haven't done for years. Jeff ripped up the hill on his snowboard, Lisa and I hooted and yipped all the way down the hill. A little bit of chocolate in Dad's honour and some other 'snacks' up the chair lift helped with the excitement.


We hit the cabin with grins on our faces and had a fabulous Valentines dinner to wrap up the day. Chicken enchiladas, Jenn's fabulous salad and some pretty amazing margaritas that Josh mixed up- made with snow, clean snow.


Sunday morning brought on David's famous Sunday morning pancakes and more skiing of course. Josh and I had the rare treat of heading out to the slopes together- sans kids!


After a morning of great snow and turns we hiked out of bounds to the summit of the mountain and rode a beautiful and long run all the way to the cabin complete with deep untouched powder, some tree skiing, ravines, little cliffs and a direct route to our cabin.


Sunday night brought more good food and a time to hang out. Monday morning we had one last family meal and took a few pictures of the whole gang.


We didn't have a cloud in the sky the whole weekend, and in the -18 winter sunshine we all headed home in our various directions vowing to do it all over again....hmmmm 5 toddlers running around a ski cabin. I think we can handle it.




1 comment:

  1. Laura - sounds like an amazing week-end!!! So glad you got to get into the skiing.
    And I could use that stumpot recipe. I happen to have some great kale in my fridge.
    Haidi

    ReplyDelete