What a weekend

Friday we pulled Orion out of school early and headed up north for what was to be our last snowboarding weekend of the year. Steve will probably get back up there a couple of times with his guy friends, but as a family, this was the end. There won't be enough snow left on the "easy" trails for Orion to ride on and I don't really like the black diamonds myself.

Here's a little montage I created using photos from the hot tub and pool and some video that Steve recorded. The little guy in the red coat is Orion and the person in the blue fleece behind him is me

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Here's how it went down:

We arrived at the hotel Friday afternoon, checked in and took Orion down to the pool that evening we went to a pretty neat place called Smitty's Cinema It's dinner and a movie all in one. We saw the new Witch Mountain movie there. Basically you go into this room and there are tables with plush arm chairs, the servers come around and take your order and then you sit back and relax in the chair, watch the movie and they deliver your dinner to the table when it's ready. You eat dinner while watching the movie. Steve and I have chicken tenders with fries and Orion had pizza. After dinner and a movie we went back to the hotel, swam some more in the pool (reality is Orion swam in the pool and Steve and I relaxed in the hot tub)

Saturday morning it was up bright and early, breakfast and off to the slopes. I decided to take a chance and let Orion have what we call "an adderrall vacation" Basically no meds for the weekend. This means my wild man was in full force all weekend but honestly, he needed it. For one thing, he eats way better when he doesn't have the meds. The meds take away his appetite and he eats like a bird. Second, the meds give him moods swings that remind me of the incredible hulk....you wouldn't like Orion when he's angry and on meds he's angry A LOT! You don't get to hear his laughter and see him smiling much on meds and darn it, I miss that so I took the leap and let him go without. Anyway, he had a 1/2 day morning lesson...basically drop him off at the learning center at 9am, pick him up at noon. This gave me a chance to get some good riding in with Steve and go faster and more aggressive (as Steve likes to call it) We picked Orion up and he was doing really well, the instructor said he was really starting to get it and he was right on the verge of connecting those turns. Orion was all about getting right back up the chair lift so instead of stopping for lunch we took him up so he could show us what he learned. He was doing a GREAT falling leaf (basically skidding on his heel edge but going back and forth like a leaf floating on the air currents) It was exciting to watch because we could really see that he was very close to connecting his turns, he just needed to get over the fear of turning that board straight down the mountain. After a few more runs with Orion we went in for lunch and Orion declared himself to be all done so we stopped for the day and went back to the hotel for some swimming (for Orion) and relaxing in the hot tub (for mom amd dad)

Sunday arrived and for the first time EVER we had a hard time getting Orion out of bed! That has NEVER happened before, this is the child who is ALWAYS awake by 6:30am!!! Once we got him up and moving though he was all about riding. He had the same instructor (Zach) which was nice because Orion has declared him to be the best instructor yet. Zach looks to be all of 15 years old but he really was great with Orion. Orion told him how we had taken him down the blue trail that goes right under the chair lift and Zach said he would take Orion on some blue stuff as long as it was ok with Mom....I thought it was great that he was taking my feelings into concideration and of course I told him to take Orion wherever they wanted to go. By noon time Orion was connecting his turns and actually carving down the mountain! When we picked him up at noon he was so excited to be really carving and it was an awesome feeling watching him connect some turns. He still did a lot of the falling leaf skid, but he did connect a few turns on the less steep stuff. I asked him about it at lunch and he told me that basically he was afraid to go fast and of course when you're carving you tend to do that....so I explained to him how he could actually carve and STILL go at his speed and have total control. I took him out there and I went ahead of him and started doing the slow controlled carve and suddenly he was copying my every move. After that, we took quite a few runs together while Steve went off to ride in the glades and hard trails with a couple of his friends who came up for the day. Orion and I had a great time riding just the two of us and I think the greatest moment was when we got on the 6 person chair together, somehow we had gotten a chair to ourselves and Orion scooted over close to me. He wrapped his arms around my arm and squeezed. He looks up at me with those big green eyes, just glowing and smiling, he was so happy. He says to me

"Mom this is really fun! Thanks for riding with me, I really like it when it's just the 2 of us."

He melted my heart and brought tears to my eyes! Moments like that are rare these days it seems, between the fact that I'm a girl and girls are disgusting and the adderrall making him so darn moody, I don't see that very often.....especially out in public where someone else might glimpse it lol

All in all, a great weekend for everyone. Orion learned a lot and stepped up into a new level of riding, mom got to have a sweet moment with her boy and we got to ride as a family which is something Orion has been wanting for quite some time. Next season should be a lot of fun, I look forward to it!