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I woke up early like a fucking idiot. Like at 5am. Everyone else lay in for another two hours.
After breakfast we took the kids to play in the snow. It didn't seem like many kids were doing this - I had seen no snowball fights or snowmen yet. But I guess if you live in this kind of environment all the time then that sort of thing loses its appeal and all the tourists are intent on flying down a mountain rather than enjoying the good stuff about snow - fighting and making magical figures that come to life and fly you off to the North Pole.
We found an area that had hardly even been walked on. There was a gazebo in the middle with picnic tables and there was no sign that it was private property, but no one else was going on there. But we did. I got some good hits in on the kids with snowballs and then we tried to make a snowman, but the snow was too powdery. We then headed back to the room to prep for the kids ski lessons.
After about 15 minutes I wondered where my phone was. It was on airplane mode still, but my watch wasn't connecting to it and it wasn't in any of my pockets. Had I dropped it? In the snow? Would I ever find it again? Could this holiday get any worse? I like my family, but I love my phone.
I retraced my footsteps and couldn't see it anywhere. Had I left it on the gazebo table and if so would it still be there? This holiday was already expensive enough without dumping a phone.
Amazingly I found it, half buried in the snow. We were lucky that no one else was going on this area or it might have been found by someone else and lost forever. But it was back with me, it's lover. Though it was really cold. Sorry phony (confusing nickname as it's the most real thing I have in my life).
We then had to get the kids in their ski stuff and get them up to the ski school. We weren't entirely sure how far away it was and hadn't anticipated how slowly the kids would move in their boots and the instructor hadn't left very clear instructions of how to meet him. I trudged up the main road carrying two sets of skis, already knackered before we started, trying to work out where we were going. The holiday, it turned out, could do worse. Are we just the most incompetent people on this planet? Why does nothing go right for us apart from the champagne and all the amazing stuff?
I had gone off ahead a bit to try and locate the instructor, but couldn't work out where I was meant to go and when I came back my family had disappeared. I was ready to lie down and die. Catie wasn't answering her phone. Is this a holiday?
Eventually I found my family but we couldn't work out where the instructor was and he couldn't work out where we were. But somehow we found him, just 30 minutes late for a two hour lesson. I had been looking forward to 120 minutes to myself, but everywhere was packed out and I just walked back to the hotel, got rid of the kids ski pole things (that they didn't need as it turned out), had 30 minutes sitting down and then had to go back to pick them up. I didn't even want to go skiiing.
The rest of the day was a bit less stressful. We had a late lunch (managing to find a table at a cafe) and then took it easy for the remaining afternoon - I even managed a little nap - and as tired as I was, we went back up the road to have dinner with our friends. This turned out to be fun and a delight and I had some healthy food to make up for the burger I'd had at lunch. It started to feel like a break rather than an extremely stressful and cold assault course.
Can't wait to get back to work and have a rest.
