Sydney Fuller

Speed Sledding

We entertained some friends in Leadville this weekend. They were going to be skiing all week so we opted for a different snowy downhill adventure: sledding! The weather was perfect. It wasn’t snowing. Finally. Sledding is usually no good when there is fresh powder because the hill gets built up with the fresh snow and you just push it down the mountain. You want more of a compacted icy surface for maximum speed. So that’s what we had this week.

Sydney got her runs in but we got tired of taking Kayla so Sydney stepped in!

Ski Queen

I have been taking Sydney skiing for a couple of years now. This usually involves a moment in parental patience as I try and teach her the skills needed without being any type of certified instructor. Yeah yeah, I should put her into a class but that’s just too normal for my tastes. But this year, I figured a 7 year old might have the maturity to take it up a notch.

Aunt Natalee was in town to ski with us. This requires us going to a real resort to ski. Sydney has never been off the greens at Eldora in the past. I figured some nice long greens would give her a better chance to develop her skills. We left the cabin and got to Copper Mountain for a nice weekday of skiing. By the time we got everyone a bathroom break and walked to the lifts, we were all getting tired. But we got right up the lift with no big trouble. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good map check and headed down a blue run with Sydney next to me. She was holding on my poles as we used to do and things were not going well. After a series of falls and steep downhills, she wanted to walk down and go home. Failure. Dad failed. But I kept her working and we got down and I promised more diligent map reading and greens from here on out.

Somewhere on the next green hill, skiing just clicked for her. She was off my poles and turning from side to side down the hill without any worry for my location. She started moving through traffic without problems. She was on fire! Who is that kid? At the bottom, she was ready to go again. So we ran more greens until lunch time. I was so proud! It made all that struggle so worth it. Then Sydney proclaimed that she wanted to return to that blue from earlier and ski it herself.

And she did! It was a nearly perfect day for her once we got past that first bad experience. Except for when she almost died — huh? We were getting on a 3 seat chair lift. Natalee and I on the outsides and Sydney in the middle. We had a bit of confusion as we sat on the chair and it threw me off my usual sequence of getting myself on and then super double checking on Sydney. We literally lifted up and started out over the “drop zone” of fresh powder that is roped off and Sydney just flew off the chair. She landed about 5’ below in the powder. We yelled “help, help!” and they stopped the lift. She was OK. You couldn’t have done a safer fall. They put her on a chair behind us and we went up the mountain. I was nervous she was back there crying but she was not. She thought it was kind of crazy and fun.

Everyone had so much fun that we went skiing again the next day at Cooper Mountain and talked Reagan into joining us. Its a smaller place with a more cozy feel. Sydney skiied with Natalee all day long and I barely saw them. Apparently, they were all over the greens, a few blues, and even took a wrong turn onto a black and survived. We are getting closer to making this a family event. Only 2 more to go!

I shot a little video of Sydney motoring along. Nothing that great if you have ever seen someone on skis before…but this is my kid…getting it done!

So proud of Sydney for hanging in there and learning to ski. Now its all up to her.

American Heritage Girls Go Bowling

Today our American heritage Girls Troop was having a fun day out together. The activity chosen for this fun day was bowling. Reagan was not too fond of this idea as bowling is not her thing. But as soon as she saw these things her mood brightened up. This type of bowling she could handle.

By the end of the night she was even giving Kayla pointers. Start ‘em young!

Sydney on the other hand was all about the hard work. There would be no ramps for her when it was definitely more fun to hurl that big ball down down the lane. Though she did insist on gutter blocks. Which I think was a good thing given her swing.

Another fun outing with our troop.

District Spelling Bee

With Sydney’s win at the 2nd grade level spelling bee, she was invited to the district spelling bee. This was several weeks later so we took a bit of a training break then got back into the words. I quickly moved to working the average and difficult words. These are the best kids so let’s be ready. Sydney was getting a bit burnt out and was looking forward to not having to do drills again. Finally, on the night before, we put the word list down and I said, “That’s it. You are ready to go. No more drills.”. To which she replied, “Unless I win tomorrow. Then we go to Arizona to compete.” You go, girl.

Kim took Sydney to a school north of Denver for the competition. No cameras. No video. One school hosts and they have all grades going simultaneously broken into different classrooms. There were about 4-5 staff members running the show in each room. I think this caused the school to have to get volunteers who were untrained in the ways of the spelling bee. They often had to refer to the rules and seemed to stray from them a few times. I wasn’t too happy with what I heard about the execution.

There were about 30 kids in Sydney’s competition. They were in a hot stuffy classroom and it took about an hour to get through 30 kids for the first round. Sydney was really getting bored as were most of the kids. They just had to sit there quietly and wait.

During round 3, Sydney was given the word “which”. And without hesitation, she says:

Which, W-I-C-H, Which.

She sat down and though she got it. When they told her it was wrong, she looked confused. This is on the easy list and I didn’t spend much time on it in training. Might not have even ever done it. Felt like a coaching failure. I figured if someone messed it up they would spell witch…like with a broom! Oops. Kim told me this was on a spelling test in school recently and she got it wrong there. Just one of those words that she didn’t have nailed and came back to haunt here. So she was out and had to sit through 9 more rounds before the champ was crowned and they were dismissed.

She came back home and I could tell she didn’t win but what are the odds of that anyway. You could be a genius but its a bit of a crap shoot given what word you get and how calm you are. Some kids got some tough words that most of us adults don’t even know the meaning of! What a “teetotum”? Or a “wren”?

It was a good experience and we were proud of her for competing. Maybe we will be back next year!