Winter Walden: Last Saturday, the boys finally go their chance to visit the slopes with Kevin.
Christopher was feeling his normal trepidation about things….didn’t want to go….not sure he was going to like it, etc. The nice thing about Walden is that the whole point is to go and take lessons, from the first beginner to the advanced ones (Kevin only has one more badge to go, I think, to have completed everything).
You can find video of Christopher’s first adventures at the link. He’s “making the pizza”…putting his skis in front of him angled at each other to go slow down the slopes. Did well at the lessons and eventually made it all the way down one of the bigger slopes by himself as the day went on. The big guy, at home, wasn’t keen on going skiing again (a lot of falling and he had difficulties getting back up), but, the day was a success overall.
You’ll notice in that video a few shots of the Kev-meister. Suzanne went (and took the video), I stayed at home….that video was the first time I’d ever seen him skiing. Was very impressed by his control; totally blown away that he was going down backwards with Christopher. Don’t know if I should have been expecting anything less…he’s been going to Walden for a while now. But that first time I saw him there backwards….a definite wow.
Matthew decided he would rather have a snowboarding lesson. Matthew has a snowboard here at home; it’s a ‘toy’ board, not a real one, as we’ve tried to tell him (to no avail). He’s achieved a measure of control on it though….can slide down the mini-hills around here in a straight line without falling and, during our one trip to a big sledding hill, as his father watched on in horror, started from the top and came all the way down (going really fast) without an issue.
Matthew was the only new snowboarder so had his own ‘personal’ lesson….and was completely frustrated by it. His instructor was definitely from the slow but certain approach, and Matthew very quickly grew very bored with it and wanted, desperately, to move up to the bigger hills.
When we went to the sledding hill, my advice to Matthew was to not do the giant hill from the top, but, to start about half way his first time and get used to it. He marched off to the hill, promptly ignored any reasonable cautious advice his Dad may have given him, and “laid it down” all the way to the bottom while Dad hopes he doesn’t have a spill to end all spills.
This story has some relevance to Day 1 at Walden; after lunch, where Matthew very emphatically explained to Mom that he could do the bigger hill, he trotted outside and, when his instructor wasn’t around then, said, ok, I’m going up. That video is here.
His instructor came out later and told him that they would try the big hill after a little more practice; Matthew pointed out that he had done it already and the instructor, after going “oh”, moved the instruction on a little bit quicker. By the end of the day Matthew was doing S-curves down the hill and can’t wait for his next chance to try again!
Basketball: Finally edited and uploaded some video of Matthew from his last basketball game. He seems content to take the shots from outside; happily for him he’s pretty good at it. Christopher’s last game is this Saturday; Matthew has two more left due to a water main break at one of the schools.
Soccer: Only two more games of our winter schedule left as well; we have one tie and five losses against teams that are mostly a year older (one of the teams has kids that are much older than that). Our defense is much improved but the boys seems to keep forgetting some of the basics and that is really frustrating. Will be nice to get back to just the outdoor team and see if some of the lessons we’ve been trying to get the boys to buy into come through…..
