First day of skiing at Coronet Peak

Thursday night we were all sad and just wanted to be together, so we declared Friday a "Family Day." When we are looking for a some relaxing time, full of laughs, we ski together. We wanted our day to be about celebrating our family, in honor of Quent.

We did laugh and celebrate. Doug told many stories about his cousin Quent. Many were classics that the boys and I already knew by heart, but still love to hear over and over. Quent once lit his parent's room on fire, then carefully shut the door and went to sit quietly next to his mom. Aunt Cheryl immediately knew something was suspicious even before she smelled smoke, because Quent never sat quietly beside her. Another time, Quent, who at the time couldn't see over the dashboard, drove the car out onto the frozen lake behind the house. Aunt Cheryl had just dashed in the house to grab something. She returned outside and the car and Quent were gone. Then she was chasing Quent and the car across the lake, praying the lake was frozen solid. My favorite story is about a young Quentin racing towards Grandma Brown with two identical ice cream cones, one in each fist. Just as he reaches Grandma one ice cream topples out of the cone and onto the ground. Quent looks at his Grandma with pity and says, "Oh no Grandma, I dropped your ice cream!" Quent was a legend in his own time in the Brown and Johnson families.

We continued to laugh when Colin fell off the ski lift. I was trying to lift him onto a particularly high chair and he are slipped from my mittened grasp and landed face down as the chair mowed over him. Luckily he was flat on the ground and not hurt. The liftee plopped Colin back up on the chair and reattached his skis while we all sat in humiliation. I wanted to shout, "We are not complete amateurs. Colin's been skiing since he was two and I've never dropped him off the chair." But, I knew the lift line had already formed their opinion and my American accent would just confirm we were tourists.

Our third run of the day, we were so excited to be on the snow, we had the exceptionally stupid idea to have a family race to the base of the lift on a mountain we barely knew. Doug and Colin were out of sight before I finished my first turn. Liam, ever the gentleman, waited for me. We didn't even know which run Colin and Doug took. And, there was no sign of either Colin or Doug once we reached the lift at the bottom. We decided they were either trying to make another run before I reached the lift or they had ended up at a different lift. We waited and waited. Finally, after our toes were frozen, we saw two dazed Kirkpatricks both holding their right shoulders slowly skiing down the hill towards us. We couldn't even gloat and rub in our victory. Colin says he caught air twice, but the second time he just flew threw the air with his arms out front until one caught the snow. He lost his skis and his goggles were around his neck by the time he came to a stop. Doug too tried to fly like Superman but with the same success as Colin. We made a group decision to take the rest of the day a wee bit slower as none of us have actually skied in 13 months. We agreed maybe a few more exploratory, warm-up style runs would help us get our ski legs back.

When we got home, showered and warmed, Doug was checking out the Coronet website and the "Shot of the Day" included Doug, Liam and Colin. The caption was "Little ski bunnies enjoying another fine day up at Coronet Peak." The photographer was trying to capture three adorable little girls dressed in matching pink snow suits making perfect turns behind their mother. The Kirkpatrick boys just got caught up in the scene and it's fun to have a record of our first day on the mountain.

Quentin was in our hearts and thoughts all day.