Almost Heaven

After a fantastic, relaxing, enjoyable Christmas, we packed up and headed to Whistler for some skiing, more skiing and hot tubbing. We skied 5 of the 7 days and the snow was fabulous. We had 15 cm of new snow in one night alone and it just kept snowing after that. The kids were in ski school every day and I took advantage of the free time to take some intermediate ski lessons myself. Lessons were great fun! My fellow skiers were an international bunch, english, irish, mexican, american, aussies.. lots of accents! I had great fun meeting some new people. Banana did a fantastic job in her lessons and even got to go down a very difficult, steep run that starts at what is literally the peak of the mountain! Gorilla also travelled up to the peak and after going above the clouds turned to his instructor and said "Are we in heaven?" to which she replied "Almost bud, Almost." I have to agree, there is something about being at the top of a mountain, staring down at these incredible, rugged mountains and trees that just takes your breath away... What our God has created for us... it is just so spectacular!!!!

Gorilla has made tremendous progress from last year's fly by the seat of his pants down the mountain events and on the last day did 2 black runs! Amazing considering black runs at Whistler are much harder than black runs on local mountains. On my last day, feeling determined to bump up into the next level, I decided to sign up for this small group lesson called a super group. I secretly wanted to do a private but couldn't even begin to justify the cost of that! But as luck would have it, no one else signed up for my level that day so I ended up with a full day private for 1/3 of the cost!!! I was so excited!! Then it dawned on me that this meant I had an instructor on me like white on rice for an entire day with no breaks while we watch some other schmuck fall down the slope... By the end of the day I was soooo tired! My instructor took me on some seriously steep runs and taught me a lot. On my second to last run down I bit it big time and for a moment my instructor actually though I broke my leg, but I was fine. The worst part of the whole event was that I was stuck in a rather comprising position and my instructor had to run up the hill to save me, LOL! But I don't usually let those types of things get to me and just laughed it off. I felt like a doofus inside but a good laugh out loud and I was ready to leave it behind. And yes, I did get to bump up to level 4... although I still think my instructor is on crack if he thinks I am ready to be hitting the black runs. Crazy talk for sure!

My dad is a member of something called the mountain club which means he has a parking spot slopeside and we get to use the pool and hot tub and have a locker for storing stuff at the Westin hotel, right in the village beside the gondola's. It is so nice not to have to cart your ski's to some remote parking spot when your legs are burning from hitting moguls. Oy vei. And I tell you, there is nothing better than sinking into a hot tub after a long day of skiing!!

We also did some shopping, went tubing at the tube park runs, spent an afternoon at the pool/indoor water playground and had dinner out at the Mongolie grill. We had a great New Years Eve party with friends from our outdoor recreation club. A BBQ catered dinner (there was 50+ people so having it catered makes a lot of sense), a DJ and lots of socializing. All in all, I think this may be the best vacation we've had, possibly even better than disneyland?! Hard to imagine I'm sure but we just had such a great time as a family. Everyone was so relaxed, no one stressed out, Gorilla was happy every day and I didn't work at all. Relaxing and therapeutic. Can't wait to go back!! 6 more nights and I am back up for the weekend - wahoo!!