Jan and Bree play a game of marbles.
Sabriya, at 4 1/2, is always singing and dancing. Here we are having a singing, dancing breakfast at Starbucks. She is proudly wearing her new NW Girl Choir Songbirds shirt.
Drive to Big White, BC. We’re spending the girls’ mid-winter break at the Big White ski area several hours east of Vancouver. The girls are excited to spend the week with a half-dozen other families from their school, including friends Jane, Katherine, Hazel, Dylan, Riley, Zachary, and Austin. It’s a long, eight-hour drive, but at least we manage to make this trip without the usual meltdown. (In years past, we’d often end a long car drive with a complete meltdown with just 30 or 45 minutes driving left to go.)
We stop for lunch in Canada just north of the Sumas border crossing. Once outside of the car, the kids notice the heavy, um, country smell. This inspires the following song, to the tune of the Japanese song “Haru ga Kita”. (The melody can be heard here: http://bit.ly/xuO1f7.)
This town is smelly
This town is stinky
Let’s get out of here
It smells like horses
It smells like cows
It smells like manure
Back in the car, we drive on and make a pit stop at a gas station in Merritt, BC. The station stands across the street from an immense lumberyard with enormous, towering piles of logs. The wood also inspires another verse in the above tune.
This town is dusty
This town is boring
It has lots of wood
We should get
Back on the highway
Leave this town for good
The powder is so deep! The mountain already had a good base, and it’s been snowing a lot (and is scheduled to snow each night we’re here). Jan and Liya take a run through a tree glade in the Black Forest area, Anya and Liya’s favorite part of the mountain.
Bree is in ski school for the four days we’ll be skiing. She starts out at the “Ready Teddy” level, a level up from kids who have never skied before. When Jan picks her up at the end of the day, she’s bumped up to “Eager Elephants”. (We can almost imagine Teddy Bears on skis, but elephants?) Bree’s in a very good mood. As Jan had promised her before ski school, he takes her skiing down the village run. She does quite well, although she makes lots of falls in the soft powder, and each time Jan has to help her back to her feet. They finally get down to the bottom about 45 minutes later, then Jan juggles four skis and two poles as they board the gondola back up.
Group photo of some of the parents and kids at Big White. Liya’s front row center, Angela’s just behind her, Jan’s next to her (far right, second row), and Anya’s far right front row.
Amazing powder day. Four of us (without Bree) take the Alpine T-Bar to one of the peaks which is famous for its “snow ghosts”: tall snow lumps which are pine trees completely encased in snow. The sun’s out for a bit, and the conditions are just perfect. We have a nice run down through the deep powder between the trees. In snow this soft, even falling down is very comfortable.
Sabriya is a Speedy Squirrel! Bree’s doing so well in ski school that her instructor says she’s ready for the next level: Speedy Squirrels. Before that level, the kids use a “magic carpet” to pull them up a gentle slope. The Speedy Squirrels graduate to using a regular chair lift to take them all the way to the top of the bunny hill.
Bree really likes the sound of this advancement, and is justifiably proud. Jan takes her skiing on the village run again and discovers that Bree has, in fact, become quite speedy. She zooms down the run at high speed, and at one point Jan has to go all out just to stay alongside. This run, which took Bree 45 minutes two days ago, now takes 5 minutes. “Let’s do it again!” she shouts. On the second run, she falls at one point, but her pride in her skiing ability extends to her independence. Jan goes to help her stand up, but she says, “No! I’m a Speedy Squirrel!”, and struggles up on her own. When they reach the bottom of the village run, Jan picks up her skis to carry them onto the gondola, but Bree says, “No! I’m! A! Spee! Dee! Squirrel!” and carries them herself.
Anya ends the day early, but the rest of us pick up Bree from ski school. She’s had a great day at school and has learned to ride up on the chair lift. The four of us spend an hour or so skiing down a variety of green runs together.
The long drive back from Big White to Seattle takes us through two blizzards, making for a somewhat harrowing journey. We finally emerge from the snow at Hope, BC, and stop for lunch at the Owl Street Café. It turns out to be decorated with many, many owls. Jan suggests to Anya that she try counting them. She and her sisters spend the rest of lunchtime running around counting owls. Anya gets up to something like 240 owls, but the proprietress says they still haven’t found them all. This occasions yet another verse for our traveling song:
This restaurant where
We’ve stopped for lunch
Has way too many owls
Owls on the walls and
Owls on the ceiling
And some owls outside
Liya reaches a new milestone in independence: we let her walk down the street by herself on an errand to the corner Red Apple market to purchase some groceries.
Jan’s been down and out with the flu since Sunday. In the early afternoon, he surfaces and makes his way downstairs. He eats a pretzel. He announces, “Well, that wore me out”, and goes back upstairs to bed.