Darn Happy: Ski Day!

Grammie Ellen is in town, so we decided to play hooky for the second half of today and take the girls up the mountain to ski. They've been asking for weeks, and it was a beautiful time to go - lots of fresh snow, but the roads are all clear!

Here is our intrepid duo, ready to hit the slope.

Up the magic carpet they go - they can't wait to get to do the chair lift on the other slopes, but for now we're just happy they've mastered this and no one fell off this year!

Elena showed really amazing agility and balance - she had such a blast and really tore it up down the hill.

Clara took a more cautious approach, but remembered everything about making "pizza" with her skis to stop that she learned last year.

And she remembered to do "french fries" to get going again!

Elena, speeding straight into the safety of Dad's arms.

Clara, really knocking it out of the park with her form on the magic carpet - she is going to be some racer one day!

A Clara skiing sandwich.

Sweet, happy Elena.

Even though she knew to do "pizza' on the hill, when she got all the way to the bottom this was Clara's preferred method of stopping - just sitting right down!

They were so proud of each other after they would get down the hill - it's not easy to hug a sister on skis, but they managed!

Right when we had decided we were done (and Elena had taken her skis off) Clara decided she needed just one more run. Elena told the rest of us to back off, and said she could help her sister back over to the lift.

So sweet to give a sister a helping hand!

And so sassy when praised about it!

A great last run for Clara:

And we were ready to head back in.

After turning in all the ski stuff we headed into Philipsburg, land of sweets. First stop was the Sweet Shoppe, to show Grammie Ellen what the fuss is all about.

Steve let each girl pick out TEN candies!

Then we hopped across the street to Doe Brothers, home of awesome milkshakes and site of a picture you may remember taken there of the girls years ago.