More skiing

Chloe and I had not really anticipated how much Zoe would enjoy skiing, and actually I was resigned to having to bribe her just to take lessons. Over the last few weeks though, she has surprised us both with how quickly she picked it up and more importunely how much she loves it! The result has been that we have taken her for half days at several places, like St. Nizier, l'Aigle and lans. It looks like this was the last weekend of snow, however so we thought we would bring both kids up to Lans for lessons. Alex, seeing his sister's excitement, has been dying to go but at only three years old cannot go into the group lessons, so we signed him up for an individual lesson. We put Zoe in a two hour lesson in the "Jardin des infants". It might have been due to the fact that the instructors had by now probably picked kids up thousands of times, dealt with many hundreds of temper tantrums, wiped a few hundred noses, and many taken them to many peepee breaks, but our impression was that the group instruction was way better at Meaudre; I think we'll stick with Meaudre for next year. Anyway, Alex's lesson did not begin well


With much crying for mommy for the first few minutes. The ski instructor was very patient though, and after pitching off the moving walkway

Alex was on his way







By the end Alex was even snowplowing a little! The instructor (Benjamin) told us that he was really impressed with Alex's first lesson. At one point the instructor had Alex hold onto Zoe, and they skied down together, which was adorable.

Zoe did great, mastering left and right turns as well as stopping and received her "Ourson" certification.



We of course bought the little medal for her

And a Piou-piou medal for ales


Despite not having skied ourselves, Chloe and I were pretty exhausted by lunchtime.

Later on we went to a friends place in Bourgoin, where I grafted some plums and plots to various trees (Apricot, Cherry, Plum) and we had a delicious meal with excellent wine.