By the time we decided to have our picture taken atop the ski mountain, my toes were near frozen — this, despite the toe warmers in my ski boots. That’s my excuse for why I started to slide backwards on my skis right when my brother, Scott, was about to snap a photo of my son, Chris, and me:
Naturally, Scott kept snapping photos — with my camera — which made me laugh harder…

Also, that I didn't get my skiis waxed, or I'd have been half-way down the trail, backwards and giggling.
It was certainly worth the laugh. It always is, when I’m with my family.
We didn’t last long on the slopes this weekend, what with the temperature hovering around 12 degrees Fahrenheit and Scott’s skis so old that a child born when he bought them would be getting ready to graduate from high school right about now. But we did exactly what the sign at the top of the ski lift said to do:
We unloaded the cares of the week. For the kids, Chris and my niece, Erin, that meant forgetting about homework and tests. For the adults, it meant leaving behind work and the creeping understanding that we’ll need to shell out big cash for new cars soon enough. (I’m currently winning the mileage contest, at 123,000 miles.)
For me, it meant putting behind what my oncologist reluctantly told me last week after I’d asked him how close to death I’d been when I was diagnosed with lymphoma two-and-a-half years ago: “Before there were treatments, most people died from that kind of cancer within a year.”
I’d had the tumor for an estimated eight months.
And so, on the mountain, I prepared to unload. We all did.
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Glad to see you unloading Jen and this is a healthy way to do it – well if you don’t fall and break a leg it is ;D ). Looks like it was fun, but freezing.