Julian learns to "skeet"

One of the biggest wins of winter 2025 was that Julian started learning how to ski. He calls it "skeeting," which is honestly a way better term than "skiing," so let's stick with that for the title of this post.

It all started at Willy's, a local ski and snowboard shop. I had had the idea of teaching Julian to ski this winter myself. I figured I would just go to Seven Springs, a nearby ski resort, and rent him skis for the day. I dropped in Willy's one night to see if I could buy a ski leash to use with J-Man and made an off-hand comment to an employee about teaching my son to ski when he explained that Willy's does free season-long ski rentals to kids under 5. It seemed too good to be true, but he explained that the whole idea was to invest in young skiers in hopes that as they grow older, Willy's will retain their business. I had to buy a new pair of kid's skis, but as long as I return them to Willy's before November 1 of the next ski season, I will get a 100% refund. I see it as a free rental. It's an amazing deal.

Next, I realized that I could just take Julian skiing at the Boyce Park Slopes in Plum, PA. Instead of driving over an hour and paying almost $180 total for lift tickets for him and myself at Seven Springs, we could just drive 35 minutes to Boyce Park, which is an Allegheny County park, and pay $20 (the cost of my lift ticket only because kids under five are free). It was so much less expensive, and the smaller hill at Boyce Park was better anyway because this was J's first time skiing ever. Who knew who many times we would even make it up the lift and how long he would actually last out?

We went skiing twice this winter. It was a huge success. He picked up on it really quickly. First, I had him practice balancing on his skis in a patch of snow on the slightest of hillsides off to the side of the lift area. Next, we rode the magic carpet up the bunny hill and we practiced by having him go down in front of me attached to the leash while I tried to control/help him from behind. Then, I let him try a few small segments of the bunny hill on his own without the leash. Towards the end of the second day, he was asking to go up the big lift, which obviously had me really excited. We went down the "big hills" a few times--with the leash of course. I can't wait for skeeting next winter.