Mt. Hood and Girl Colors

Today we all took a trip to Mt. Hood with Marisa. Despite having spent my whole life in Oregon, I can't recall ever having actually been up there, so I was pretty excited. We were going to Skibowl - Cara and Marisa were going snowboarding, Cara for the first time, while Elias and I were going to spend part of the day tubing and part of the day hanging around the lodge.

Riding the inner tubes proved to be quite a bit more exhilarating than I'd anticipated - they move pretty fast, and when you get turned around it's hard to tell where you're going - but Elias liked it. We also ran into one of the kids from the center, which was a nice surprise. After a couple runs down the hill, Elias decided he was done, so we spent a few minutes in the play area and then caught a shuttle over to the snowboarding slope. We all had lunch together, and then I did some reading and Elias watched Gummi Bears while Cara and Marisa finished riding.

No doubt thanks to his particularly stylish snowsuit, Elias was of course mistaken for a young lady today by some of the resort employees. I mean, that kind of thing happens even when he's not wearing pink. Anyway, it came up again after we'd come home and were having dinner, and Elias said, "Mommy, it doesn't matter what names boys and girls have, right? And it doesn't matter about boy colors and girl colors." That's something we've struggled with before, so it was especially nice to hear tonight.