One Last Ski at the Ghee

We have been wanting to get Emmett up skiing one more time this season and Saturday worked out to be a great day for it.  Grand Targhee had received 22 inches of snow over the last two days!  Ezra and I decided to come along, hoping for true Spring skiing weather and a chance for him to play in the snow and maybe try the skis again.  Grand Targhee is about 1.5 hours from our house, on the way the temperatures dipped into the negative digits, making me hope I had enough layers for everyone. 

Jim had decided to buy a lift ticket so that Emmett would have more than just the bunny hill to practice on.  The morning was a little rough, Emmett didn't want to wear his new ski stuff and his old ski stuff is really quite small on him.  It was cold, Emmett was complaining about everything, and Jim was getting a little discouraged.  They came into the lodge for food and Jim decided to take Ezra out to ski.  I took Emmett to the car to change into the bigger ski clothes and gave him a big pep talk.  Ezra did 4 runs on the bunny hill and was a total trooper.  When we got back to the lift Emmett was excited to ski and the sun was really warming things up.  Ezra and I went to warm up and hang out in the lodge and we got reports via walkie talkie that Emmett was doing great.  Ezra was wanting to ski more so we went out to meet them and Ezra got to do a few more runs.  After hanging out for a while longer in the lodge it was clear that Ezra was very tired (It was around 1:30 by that point).  I took him to the car and changed his diaper and we found a closer parking spot.  After about 3 minutes in his carseat he fell asleep and took a good long nap.  I had a book to read and enjoyed the sunshine streaming into the car (I was worn out from lugging kids, food and ski gear from the car to the lodge to the lift and back and forth and back and forth).  Emmett wanted to do every run in the "kids fun zone" (a super fun area on the mountain that has runs with names like "eyeball forest", "alley oop alley", "mouse house",  "Fred's hideout", and "bobsled run."  Unfortunately we ended up with only one picture of Ezra and a short video of him on the magic carpet lift. 

The real drama occured when it was time to go.  Emmett crashed on his last run and got a small cut on his face.  He was exhausted, and that compounded with his injury made him pretty emotional.  I got him calmed down and warmed up while Jim packed up our stuff.  Ezra woke up and we got some hot chocolate for the trip home.  We were loaded up and ready and the car wouldn't start.  It just clicked.  We looked at the manual, hoping it was just the battery, but after running a little diagnostic test on it we feared it was something more.  We didn't have cell phone service.  Jim checked fuses.  The thoughts of getting our car towed from the mountain to town entered our heads and figuring out how to get carseats and kids home made us nervous.  Jim went to see if the resort had a portable jump starter we could use since there were cars all around us but no people.  The boys and I prayed for him and for the car.  The portable jump starter didn't start the car.  But Jim thought it made it a little progress.  Finally the people in front of us got to their car and they jumped us and the car started!  Emmett was so excited to tell Jim that we had prayed for him.  I was so glad to stop having worse case scenarios run through my head.

 

In other news, Emmett celebrated St. Patrick's day in style with a green smoothie mustache.  He also pinched his Sunday school teacher. 

 Emmett also finished up his basketball class and that was lots of fun.  He made lots of progress, it's so funny to watch kids learn how to dribble.  He made a real breakthrough when the coach told him to dribble with his finger tips.  Even though he holds his hand really funny, he actually has some semblance of control.