Looking Ahead

My childhood was blessed in many directions. One memorable area of blessing was in family vacations. A few stand out.

Around the age of six my parents took us to California to visit some cousins and to see Disneyland. A few years later we visited Colorado and traveled the mountains to Ouray and Durango. Lastly, my junior year in college we took a trip to Washington DC. In between these larger trips we traveled on more regional excursions to various places in Texas and Arkansas.
And so we try to pass that blessing on to our own kids, hoping that they will enjoy well the full range of God’s Creation…or at least the part we can affordably reach. We’ve taken them on large trips to Colorado, Virginia, and Turkey and look forward to future trips.

This year we decided on a ski trip to New Mexico and made a couple of decisions that affected the trip. First, we decided to extend the kids’ Christmas vacation and to cut into their return to school. So we planned to ski the Saturday, Sunday, Monday of the weekend preceding the beginning of school. Although this cut into their return a bit, it guarantees fewer skiers. Despite my affinity for education, school attendance isn’t sacrosanct. This also allowed us to take our time getting out there. Since none of our kids have ever seen snow in any accumulation, we wanted to give them a chance to enjoy it before they skied it.

Our second decision was to go with another couple from church. Like me, Rob works for the state (although not at my institution) and Laura is a nurse like Kadie. They also have a little boy who is a couple of months older than Squealer as well as a two year old daughter. Frankly, they are among the few couples who could identify with the typical normal state of chaos surrounding our family. Our decision to travel with them cut our costs substantially.

Rob is an organizer and handled the lodging logistics throughout our trip. I, to put it mildly, am not. I did cook all the meals ahead of time so we wouldn’t get gouged by the locals. We rented a 15 passenger van and stuffed the nine members of our families into it.

We threw Squealer into ski school for 2 days and the girls for one. And they all took to it well. Kadie and I skipped ski school, but spent a day anyway remembering how to ski. It took two of full days for us to regain our skiing “skills,” which had lain dormant for twenty winters.

The second day we took the girls out and were amazed at how quickly they picked it up. Scooter took a few more chances and thus bit the dust snow more often. Skeeter, normally the risk taker of the two, was slow and steady and rarely fell down.

The third day we took Squealer out and worked with him. They teach the kids to either keep their skis in a “pizza” (a wedge) to slow down or to keep them “French fries” (parallel) to speed up. (I’m unsure what this says about the contemporary dietary status of most Americans that five year olds understand this language universally). But the effect is humorous.

As Squealer scooted down the slope, I followed behind him and constantly yelled “Pizza!” or “French Fries!” depending on his rate of speed. To an outsider it must’ve seemed like I was threatening him with a high-carb diet. Squealer invariably accelerated beyond his capacity to control his direction and I would have to shout at him to “Sit Down!!”which resulted in several spectacular crashes.

Squealer rarely does things halfway. He took to skiing quickly, but when he crashed, he did so with gusto. In one particularly tremendous show, he disappeared into a cloud of snow and pinwheeling skis as he lay motionless for a moment. Then he looked up at me and shouted “That was AWESOME!!” to the delight of the assembled skiers.

On the third day all five of us skied some blue slopes, definitely Squealer’s favorite. But still, it’s a sobering vision to see your five year old scooting past you at breakneck speed.

But the most beautiful memory of the trip was on a long green slope where the five of us were skiing by ourselves. Soon after we started, there began a gentle, but substantial snowfall. Flakes as large as nickels danced around us as we skied along our solitary path, looking at gorgeous evergreens graced with snow.

After a few minutes taking in this breathless beauty, Scooter stopped us and said “Daddy, it’s just like we’re inside a snowglobe!”

Looking ahead, I hope we’ve burned some family memories into their childhood.

I have a few pictures to inflict on you.







There’s nothing quite so strong as the bond between a boy and his tumbleweed. (Squealer at a rest area in the Texas panhandle).















Dalhart, Texas takes great pride in a large tile encrusted bovine that stands guard over highway 87 in front of a Valero gas station. When our kids saw it, Scooter immediately christened it Starbutt.
(I wonder if it's visible on Google Maps? Yep!)





Scooter (left) took some incredible pictures .