Ingrid is abstaining from sweets and from most digital entertainment for Lent. Our family is pretty non-religious so I don’t exactly know where she got the inspiration, but anyway.

She’s having to make an effort to come up with non-digital pastimes. Today she joined Adrian in beading for the first time in forever.

Adrian took a photo of me yesterday.

My expression of amused resignation was due to what Adrian was doing at the time – sort of eating snacks, in a rather slow and silly way, and then showing off for the camera.

Ready to go down the slope.

If you look carefully, you can see a glimpse of blue sky back there! We’re ending our ski trip on a high note, with the best skiing conditions thus far.

Adrian goes down the hill like a hay wagon. Plants his skis wide, aims them in the right direction and then heads straight down. Barely brakes, rarely turns.

Ingrid shows off her hockey stop skills.

Day three of skiing and snowboarding.

Ski school is the best thing ever, and so is skiing, say the kids.

Adrian is progressing in leaps and bounds. He has graduated from the kids’ slopes to the real thing and bravely goes snow ploughing down the green slopes together with us.

Ingrid’s ski school group has gone down blue and red slopes and even a little bit of black. She’s practicing her “hockey stop” and is proud and pleased with the amount of snow that goes flying when she stops.

Eric and I have found a favourite green slope and even though we occasionally try others, we keep coming back to “Grandma’s downhill race”.

I have a new pair of ski boots for today. I’ve never found ski boots particularly comfortable, and the ones I rented initially seemed as good or as bad as any other. But yesterday afternoon I could barely stand or walk in them, because they hurt my shins so badly. I exchanged them for the widest model available, and the difference is huge! Now my shins no longer feel like I’m pushing them into a pair of narrow drainpipes. From my vantage point, my calves look like any other, but I guess my perspective is distorted.