As you probably figured out from my post yesterday we’re going skiing in a week! My husband and I and our three eldest (9, 6 and soon to be 3 year olds). Special K (8 months now) won’t be joining us on this little trip.

I am both excited and anxious. I am anxious because I always get anxious when it’s me who has organized a trip. I worry I forgot to book something crucial or have made a big mistake like booking a car from the airport that isn’t big enough for the kids and my husband and the bags. Or too big! And many other small details. It keeps me up at night. But in the end it will be what it will be and what it will be is fun.

Another thing that worries me is what B, who is three at the end of this month, is going to do there. Will he have fun? Will he be bored? Will I be feeling guilty for leaving him with the nanny for hours every day while my husband, I and our two elder children go skiing?

I found a program at the ski school targeted at children his age and younger actually. A kind of ski nursery so that’s what he will do in the morning. The plan is (yes I like to plan and it makes me feel better and if we ditch the whole thing when we get there it’s ok as well. But I like to plan!)

8.30 wake
9 Breakfast
10 Ski for us, ski school for B
12.30 We all meet for lunch
1.30 B goes home for nap we go on skiing
3.30 We finish skiing and chill in town for a bit
4.30 or so go home and shower and change
8 go out to dinner

Sounds good to me. So B would be busy in the morning and sleeping in the afternoon. Of course this is if he doesn’t change his mind about coming. He marched into my dressing room today and said “I don’t want to ski! If I lift my big glasses up (goggles) and the white thing comes in my eyes it will hurt me! is K going with you?” Me:”No” B:”then i will stay with K. You go ski”. After watching a couple of videos of children playing in the snow and on small little ski’s slipping and sliding on flat slopes he got excited again. Also the promise of hot chocolate helped!

My family and I used to go skiing every year when I was a child till I was about 14 years old. Then we stopped. I went again 4 years ago and I was so excited to go as an adult and ski how and when I wanted to! When I was a child my mother would wake us every day at 7.30 and we would be on the slopes, I swear to you, before the ski lifts opened! And we would stay on the slopes till they closed. I kept telling everyone how I wouldn’t set foot on the slope before 10.30 and I’ll stop skiing when every I wanted to! I may even skip a day of skiing and just do nothing!

So we went to sleep the first night in our lovely log cabin and I purposefully didn’t set an alarm! Some hours later my husband said “B, wake up” I look at my watch thinking it will be sometime around 9 am. Maybe even 10! I see it’s 7.20!!! I say “It’s 7.20!!! I want to sleep!” In the back ground I can hear a noise outside the window. It sounds like a strong rain shower. I think maybe it’s raining. Even more reason to sleep!!! It didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t be raining this high up in the mountain it would be snowing.

“Wake up!” My husband says. And for some reason he is rushing around the room doing things. I am wondering why he’s so anxious to get on the slopes! They’ll still be there in a few hours! At this point I am both angry and feeling sorry for myself and want to be left alone to sleep! “It’s too early! The slopes are closed and I don’t want to wake up! If you want to go skiing early go I want to stay in bed!”. My darling husband then says, with all the patients of Ayyub (Job) “Wake. Up. The. Cabin. Beside. Ours. Is. On. Fire!”. Then it registered that the sound of the rain is actually fire crackling and the smell of the fire is so over powering I have no idea how I didn’t notice it to begin with! It’s what woke my husband up. Needless to say I got up straight away.

We were fine and so were the people who were in the cabin beside us. The cabin it’s self was so close to the one we were in that had I stood on our balcony and reached out I could have touched it. We were stuck outside our cabin for 5 hours while they let the fire burn it’s self out. I only had time to put sweat pants, a jumper on and uggs before I left and didn’t even get a chance to wash my face or brush my teeth. Thank God my husbands parents were a few cabins down and we spent the time there. And they had an extra toothbrush and yummy food so all was good. The kids were in another cabin with all their cousins

That will teach me to ridicule anything my mother did when I was a child.

I will try and be good this trip and take pictures and blog about how it’s going with the children. I hate that we’re leaving special K behind but I know it would be a nightmare to take him with us.