(FYI: This is Jamie's first post! And for the record I did not consent to all the junk food that was consumed, I think I cried a little when I read that...;)
Last Sunday after church I took Toby up to Mt. Hood Ski Bowl to teach him my favorite sport, skiing! I've been looking forward to the day that I'd be able to ski with my boys for a long time and it's hard to believe that Toby is already big enough to start learning. I decided to write this post because I was the one who experienced it with him.
To begin our adventure we got our gear packed up, loaded into the car, and drove straight to McDonalds. Since it was just me and Tobes and it was a super special occasion I let him order whatever he wanted, which turned out to be cookies and Coke. This made me so proud that I couldn't turn him down. The next hour in the car was spent screaming Sunday School songs at the top of our lungs. I can't believe how many times he wanted to sing "Father Abraham" and "Up Right, In Right, Out Right, Down Right".Then, our next stop was at the Thriftway in Welches for a Sno-Park permit. Toby wanted some snacks while we were there so he picked out an orange, some Zotz candy, and two big gum balls.
When we got to Ski Bowl we went and got him his lift ticket and then went to rent his gear. He had a hard time walking around in ski boots and kept tripping, but he was excited when he saw that his rental skis were red (just like dada's). I took him outside and got him strapped into his skis, but he wasn't ready to ski, so I didn't push him. He was too excited about the snow to try skiing yet, so I let him take them off. So we just had a snowball fight and he did snow angels for about 20 minutes. I decided that it was time to try again and tried skiing down the bunny hill with him in between my legs. He didn't like that idea at all and kept saying that he wanted to do it all by himself. So I let go and he did great; he skied half way down the hill all by himself without falling! He had an absolute blast and wanted to do it over and over. He was laughing so hard and he kept asking if he could ski down the hill and "crash into that guy or that pink girl".
We took a little snack break to eat our orange and candy in the lounge chairs just outside the lodge. Toby asked if he could have a gumball (another first for him) and I told him the rule with gum is that you can't swallow it. I guess he thought he couldn't even swallow his spit while chewing gum because every few seconds he would spit out the gum and a mouth full of spit onto the snow. Then he'd pick the gum back up and chew on it again until his mouth filled up with spit again. The crazy dude did this for like 10 minutes.
We got our skis back on and did 4 or 5 more runs until the power on the whole mountain went out. It started to rain so I told Toby we better call it a day. He didn't care that it was starting to rain and he wanted to keep skiing. I bribed him to start heading to the car by telling him we should go get some hot chocolate. I'm glad that we left when we did because as soon as we got to the car the rain started dumping and then it turned to hail. The skies got very dark and then some pretty big thunder and lightning started. Once a huge thunder rumbled really close by and Toby said, "I'm kinda freaked out!".
By this time it was almost 4:00 PM and Toby still hadn't taken his 1:00 PM nap. After a fun day of skiing he fell asleep as soon as we started driving home. The storm had knocked out power all the way down past Sandy. The traffic was horrible and it took us about 3 hours to get home. It was pretty crazy driving through Sandy with the whole city, including stores and stop lights, out of power. After Toby woke up from his nap I got him the hot chocolate that I promised him. He drank his kids hot chocolate with extra Cool Whip in about 7 minutes and wanted another one.
I had a blast taking Toby up to the mountain for his first ski trip. He blew away all of my expectations and I was so proud of him. It was really special to have a whole day to just hang out with my Tobes.
