Enjoying Winter With Family SKIING WITH PAPA
Living in Utah I have learned that many people dislike the winter immensely. They think it’s a time of slippery roads, shoveling and enduring freezing temperatures that chill their bones. However, for me, I absolutely love the winter and look forward to playing in the snow and getting to enjoy and do my very favorite thing-- skiing. I’ve skied since I was a young boy and every fall I get excited when the air gets cold and the snow starts to fall. When I hear people say they don’t like the cold, I have a hard time understanding it because when I’m out in the cold I don’t notice it. In fact, when I’m skiing I feel warm and often have to unzip my coat to let some cool air in. I started teaching skiing when I was in college and not only was it a fun job but it was truly the only way I could afford to ski. For years, I taught at Snowbird ski resort and really fell in love with the place and have so many great memories skiing there and being with friends and family. My wife had been skiing a few times when we were dating; but after we weremarried, I made sure she became a better skier
and taught her and encouraged her to keep improving and through the years we had many fun family ski days with our children. I started teaching most of our kids when they were just 3 years old and a couple of them actually rode in a backpack on my back when they were as young as 9 months old. One of my favorites memories was listening to my young daughters sing and squeal with joy when I would go a little faster than usual with themon my back. I never knewwhat kind of comments I would get from other skier’s on days I hadmy baby on my back. The comments were either, “Wow, that is so awesome” or “You shouldn’t have your baby out here--that is so dangerous” or “What if you fall?” I would smile at them with any comments and tell them, “I don’t fall.” But, in any case, all my children are good skiers and I feel like I gave them a gift by teaching them to learn to do something hard like skiing and to love winter as much as I do. My recent joy in skiing has been teaching my grandkids how to ski. In the last couple years, I’ve had 9 of our 16 grandkids on skis, not to mention two more of the grandkids that were in baby backpacks.
The thrill of seeing these kids progress from being a little scared going down a steeper slope to being able to make turns with confidence and control is still exciting to me. Last year a couple of my grandchildren were pretty uneasy because we skied some pretty steep slopes and it seemed hard and a little scary to them especially when I constantly encourage them to ski steeper slopes. But, recently my older grandchildren have experienced a lot of breakthroughs this year as they have improved making their turns and staying in control and now they love it and want to go every Saturday. There are a lot of analogies to life in skiing. The one that I shared with my grandkids recently was to remind them that they can learn to do hard things. I’ve related their skiing tomany things in life that when you start anything new, it can be quite hard. But, as you work hard and stick with it gets easier and easier. As it gets easier, it gets more fun and confidence builds. Recently I told my grandkids, you can do anything you want in life, just think about skiing and how hard it was at first, but as you stuck with it you got better and better at it.
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