We finally made it to Shawnee Peak with Fino yesterday (he took the afternoon off from work). It's taken us all winter to coordinate the family schedule for us to downhill/board together.

It was windy when we arrived around 4 p.m. (love the Monday Madness special) and the wind chill temps plummeted by the minute. But that didn't stop us from having a good time. And in what seems to be tradition now, I took some video of the kids while I was boarding down the mountain myself. I'm beginning to think I'm pretty good at multi-tasking on the mountain while not hurting myself in the process. But there will be no video of me getting off the chair lift; I still can't master that one.

But L. was still a little hesitant about downhill skiing again on this trip. She hasn't forgotten her fall earlier this season and it took me suggesting she had "magic gloves" to get her to loosen up. Actually, I was in rare form on the chair lift with the girls yesterday.

I know, I was being weird but I had worked all morning so I was a little tired...

And as I said, I fall a lot getting off the lift (more often than not I must admit). I really wish other skiers and riders would heed the signage at the top of the mountain that asks them to move out of the way once they are off the lift. I get myself so worried I'm going to plow into someone (with only one boot strapped in, I don't have as much control -- and I'm not the best boarder to begin with ...) and hurt the people who stand right at the base of the lift. Instead I end up trying to stop before I have control off the chair and trip myself up. But it's not always other people either; sometimes I fall when no one is around - I'm special that way.

On one of those falls I managed to knock one of my bindings out of whack. But luckily Fino had a penny in his pocket and managed to fix things up well enough for me to get down to the bottom of the mountain.

My handy-man hero.

He nearly got frostbite trying to fix my binding because the wind chill was so strong and cold and he couldn't manage the penny and bindings with his gloves on. But it turned out that the penny was more worse for the wear than he was.

And as we were taking off our gear at the end of the night, G. reported that her boots had really hurt. I think she's due for some new ones next year since this is the second year she's had issues with those boots.

We joked that she was bitten by a vampire on the mountain. And note the Christmas socks, just like last year :-)

Oh, and I have to mention this because L. was so insistant that I could not cover up her old trail pass with the new one.

" 'Ski the cow' is too funny to cover mom!"

The pass from our afternoon cross country skiing at Smiling Hill Farm.