Well this weekend it clicked for him and by the end of his second day he was actually conecting his turns all the way down the trail. It's still a slow paced skidding carve, but he is not falling down. The amazing part of this was that the morning of that second day he was hit really hard....every mothers nightmare that luckily turned out ok. I had him over in the beginner area trying to get him carving more and working on getting some speed when this girl comes flying down from behind. She hit me so hard that I spun around a complete 360 degrees! If I had not been a better rider I would have been on the ground, but I kept myself up and by the time I had spun around and was facing down the mountain again Orion was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet in the air, the girl was laying on the ground down below. I just about lost it right there...I didn't care if that girl was hurt or not! Orion came down landing flat on his back crying. I was freaking out, I was literally in tears with fear and worry that he was hurt. I got down to him and he managed to sit up. He was ok, everything moved and the girl was laying there below us not really moving much. Her father came down behind us to see if we were ok and appologized for her hitting us. She was probably about 16 years old, but she was a big girl and trust me we both felt how fast she was flying. It had been her first time on ski's and she had no clue how to stop. It all turned out ok because all three of us were ok in the end, just scared and sore but nothing broken. Orion, at first didn't want to snowboard anymore after that. He was pretty shaken and upset so I took him back to the lodge where we found Dad and I had Dad give him a little pep talk and help me get him back out on the trails riding. He needed to get back out there or the fear would win. After a good hour we finally managed to get him back out there riding again, even though he was rattled a bit. I talked to him at the top of the trail and told him when he wanted to go to his toe edge all he had to do was lean forward so that his head went over his toes and the board would follow. That's all it took...he connected 30 turns in a row! We did a couple more runs after that and sure enough he connected his edges heel to toe over and over again all the way down the trail!
Day three, he did it all day long, we did about 30 runs and he didn't fall once and didn't do the "falling leaf" skid at all! He was one exhausted little boy though, but he made a huge step and I am so proud of him! Here's a video hubby managed to get of Orion finishing up that very first run after I told him to lean his head over his toes! The first part of the run is too big to attach so you don't see as much of his carving and connecting turns, but you do get to see a little of it and you get to see his awesome toe edge stop that he couldn't do at the beginning of the day!
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