France – Day 7 (Wednesday, December 31, 2008): Joe’s last ski school day, SNOW, New Year’s Eve, fireworks and snowball fights!

Today was the first heavy day of snow that Les Gets received since December 17th. We were SOOO excited!!

Today was Joe’s last ski school day. He was not fond of skiing in the heavy snow because his goggles fogged up and built up with snow. Eventually Joe ended up taking off his skis and walking the rest of the way down the hill. He hasn't decided if he'll ski again.

Last New Year's Eve when Lillia was just a little over a month old, Tina and Amanda took ink prints of Lillia's hand and foot. This year Tina bought a kit for us to take a cement print of them. Lillia didn't seem to mind it ... at first.

Despite the fact that we couldn't get reservations for dinner or communicate to the butcher that we wanted a rotisserie chicken, New Year’s Eve dinner was a success. Amanda cooked pasta with a garlic butter sauce, a tartiflette (potatoes, butter, bacon and 2 kinds of cheese) and grilled sausages. Megan had to drink out of a creamer because we were out of clean dishes and we kept accidentally hitting the dishwasher to start over and over again and it was in the middle of a cycle.

The fireworks in Les Gets were in early evening to accommodate the children so they started about 6:30 p.m. We watched the fireworks display from the chalet but it was snowing so heavily that we could hardly see them. In fact, we heard them more than we saw them. After dinner and the fireworks, we crawled up on the couches, watched Meet the Fockers and Lillia had some snuggle time with Daddy. Then Megan and Tori put on a dance show for us. It was so cute!! Amanda hung out a bit with the girls and chatted.
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We counted down the New Year, took pictures and called loved ones.

Then the snowball fights ensued! The girls went outside and got into a huge snowball fight with the neighboring chalet. When the girls got cornered behind the cars, Nick went out to protect them but, because the security light came on as he went out the door, he got totally beaned with snowballs. Everyone shook hands and wished each other a Happy New Year but that isn’t the end of the snowball story. Sometime later the girls went out again and Nick hid behind a huge snowdrift on the side of the house. He threw a snowball and totally nailed one of the neighbor guys in the head. We were on the balcony and Amanda was taking pictures. The guys started bombing the balcony and when Amanda got nailed in the face (and after utterly a lovely obscenity), we hauled it back inside until the snowball wars were over.

[We found out later that the guys at the chalet next door broke all the glasses that they had on their balcony during the snowball fight, so the women of the chalet locked them out of the chalet. The next morning the outside of both of the chalets had remnant snowballs hanging from the balconies.]

We finally went to bed and we were sad that it was our last night in Les Gets.