I told you guys I would let you know how the snowboarding progressed. Late last week we had yet another snow day and I took the kids up to our closest resort, Wintergreen. Earlier we had purchased the learn-to-ski/snowboard package. It included three days of lift tickets, rentals and lessons. This was our second trip up and it was great. The weather was again perfect and we were one of the only counties who had a snow day, so there were very few people there. The kids had there own private instructor, made incredible strides and loved their cool instructor. Most importantly, he was able to teach my youngest, who is not very tall, how to get off the lift when she has to jump off and he taught the oldest a few tricks and he now feels like he can keep up with his friends. I think for the third lesson, I will plan to pull the kids out of school one afternoon and hope they can have private lessons again. I was also wonderful that there were so few people there that I wasn’t concerned about the kids being skied into.
We have started to consider buying a family season pass for next year and with that, we have started to look at buying equipment. So far we did buy the youngest a helmet that fits her very well. I got some great advice from my Vail snowboarding friend on buying equipment for kids. He suggested buying them a used board from a local shop and buying cool stickers to put on them. Small boards aren’t going to have lots of riding time on them, you can get the board a good tune and you should be all set. Kids outgrow their equipment and also don’t think it’s cool after a season or two. Sizing is also important, they need to have a board they are comfortable with and can turn. It’s hard to buy a board they can grow into. On helmets, you just want something that fits well, protects their head and keeps them warm. Try going to a local shop and ask what they have, a used helmet is fine and again that’s what stickers are for. The fit is the most important part of the helmet. It can’t come off during a collision, that defeats the purpose. Many shops will also rent equipment for a season and you can usually rent much nicer equipment than you would ever want to buy.
Wish us luck, so far it’s been a ton of fun!







































