Today, I felt like a Mom—a good one–with a cool hat.
I took Hanna and Ellie tubing at a local ski hill and we had a fantastic time.
So often our weekends are booked with one activity too many and the weekends with nothing planned, I feel guilty letting the kids just crash and make WeeMee’s on their ipods, all the live long day. This while I annoyingly ask Greg what a WeeMee is, all the live long day.
I wanted to get them outside, get them reasonably close to a real ski hill so we could potentially consider that for a future visit and have some fresh-air fun.
It was great to be outside with my kids.
It gave me a sense of how everybody was doing in that moment.
Hanna, age nine, would walk a few steps ahead of us to the top of the hill—normal. She wanted to distance herself from her Mommy in the goofy hat and show her independence by figuring out where to go, how to line-up and then spin like crazy while she laughed loudly all the way to the bottom.
She would complain when she realized the age limit for required helmets was eight, but knew it was a battle she wasn’t likely to win.
Ellie, age six asked if we could go down the hill together for the first run—normal. By the second run she wanted to go by herself, no spin. Third run, alone, small spin. By the end of our tubing adventure she was traveling alone and yelling, “I want the biggest spin you’ve ever given ANYONE!”
WHEEEEEEE!!!
Her excitement was contagious and sometimes she wasn’t sure how to express herself. At one point she said, “Mommy, hold my legs, I’m going to do a handstand!”
I learned something about myself too. I decided to walk up the hill rather than take a free ride on the conveyor belt.
The sun was shining, my ridiculous clown-hat hardly keeping my ears warm, music playing on the speakers overhead was Owl City’s “It’s Always A Good Time.” My heart was pounding while I pretended to check my watch and fix my crooked hat, but really I was catching my breath and thinking of how lucky I was to have this time, on a mountain with two happy and healthy kids.
As we returned our tubes, Hanna asked if they could climb on the giant tower of them and I said, “Sure, go ahead!” They fell through a series of tubes almost landing on the cement floor. I feared our perfect day with my seriously stupid hat, (why did I buy that thing?) would be ruined with a rescue effort and two kids stuck at the bottom of a well made entirely of tubes.
Some employees at the slopes came in when they heard the commotion and I turned my Mommy hat on and said something like, “Okay girls, I don’t think we’re supposed to be climbing in here,” as I winked at the staffers and laughed at what a hypocrite I can be sometimes.
Then when we were packing to get into the car Ellie said to me, “Mom! I love tubing! I swear this is the longest I’ve ever been outside in my entire life!”
Dear Guinness Book Of Records, please accept this submission in the category of girls ages six and under, Longest Time Outside, 90 minutes as the time to beat.
