Snowboarding (Feb 26)

First off, Happy Birthday to my sister!  OMG, she is 49 years old!!  Although, she keeps saying that she is only 39.   Ha ha! I can't imagine she will be 50 years old next year.  The thought of that is just insane! And that also means I'm slowly sneaking up to that milestone birthday too. Yikes!!

Anyway, ok - snowboarding. Yes! We finally took the boys up to the slopes in Wisconsin.  We had talked about it but never really acted on it.  So here we go!!  Woah, look at those tubing slopes. There's so many lanes!

So I had been telling the boys the story about the first and last time I went snowboarding.  I had a granola bar of some sort in the front pocket of my jacket.  And when I had a wipe-out on the snowboard and landed on my face, that granola actually really hurt me on my chest!  Now that I am back on the slopes, this is the boys' idea of a good laugh. Ha!!

Although I thought for sure that this was THAT jacket with the front pocket, but it isn't!  I wonder which other jacket it is? I'll have to dig through my closet :-)

This is quite the place! Sunburst ski is about 2 hours north from us:

There was a machine that spit out our pre-purchased lift tickets. Easy enough!  And now we have to go try on some snowboard boots. There are sooooo many!

Thankfully it didn't take long for that either.  The only thing that was a slight hiccup was the snowboard rental area.  The attendant said we didn't have something specific and sent me back out to where I had obtained the lift tickets. Well, that attendant sent me back in rental building and I only had to just go to this window that was NEXT to the snowboard attendant. Sheesh! I definitely got my steps in for that morning!

We have about 20 minutes before Graham and Charlie's first official snowboarding lesson:

Oh man, a moving ramp?!

While the boys are heading up the ramp, Mommy and Daddy take a couple of photos:

Bobby is ready to hit the slopes!

Charlie's first run:

Just glad Charlie ran out of speed at the end and didn't run that lady down!

Here's Graham on one of his first runs.  And geez, where's the etiquette of people crossing the beginner slope?!

Okay, time for their lesson.  This video just cracks me up everytime I watch it.  Graham just keeps falling, but hey - he doesn't give up!

Lesson video: https://youtu.be/WtDk97Ka4Ck

After the lesson, Graham really took off and was feeling very comfortable. I think he has his Ripstick to thank for that. A Ripstick is almost like a skateboard but not quite.  Here's actually a photo of Graham holding his Ripstick - this was back in November 2021, in Buellton, CA. 

Charlie and I struggled a bit more.  Going straight down the hill is actually the easy part. It's knowing how to carve down the slope and stop! 

And the only way I know how to stop is fall on my butt. Ha ha!  And it's so funny,... after watching this video, I really wasn't going so fast.  It seemed so much faster at that moment when I was coming down that hill on the snowboard. So strange!!

Lunch time! 

Not the healthiest - chicken nuggets, hot dog, empanada, and mozzarella sticks.  Maybe we need to pack our own lunch next time!

I love how this place is not busy.  And this was a Sunday afternoon!

Well, even if we can't snowboard, at least we are looking the part :-)

Charlie and I need to figure out how to recover when we end up having our backs facing the bottom of the slope!

Well, it was a great day no less.  Poor Daddy though was skiing mostly on his own since he hit the bigger slopes.  Hopefully someday, we will be able to join him!

Tired Momma and her boys! :-D

And oh, there's one more thing to do, try and take our snow boots off.  Yikes, quite the chore. LOL!!

Time to drive home and look, it's the Haribo factory along the freeway!

Yup, already looked it up - they don't give factory tours. Booooo!!!  That's really too bad.  It would be so cool to watch how they make those gummy bears.  Those were my life savers during my long drives while traveling on my golf tour.  Ahhh, those were the days!