Nielson Family Adventures: Tsaghkadzor

A few weekends ago we went up to Tsaghkadzor. The kids and I went tubing, while Jared attempted to snowboard. Now I use the term "attempted" here for 2 reasons. 1-He was the only one who had ever been snowboarding, so he was instrucing the other 3 Marines on snow boarding techniques. 2-The snow on the mountain wasn't as much snow as it was ice. He made it down the hill 2 times... and the second time he went alone!
The tubing "hill" was more of a tubing run... there was one path that had raised walls, but again, the path down was compacted snow, borderline ice. When we got to the hill, Van was off! I knew that he would love it. I was unsure how Ava would like it though. (Last year I attempted to take her sledding in Utah. She went down the hill one time. After that she kept telling me, "Mommy I love sledding, but only very slow." So I PULLED her sled back and forth across the bottom of the hill for an hour.) When Ava and I sat in the tube at the top of the ice hill in Tsaghkadzor, I looked down and she was smiling! Good sign! I lifted my feet and we were off! About half way down the hill our tube spun us so that we were going down the hill backward. Even then, the smile remained! When we came to a skidding stop after bumping into the wall at the bottom, I tentativley looked down at Ava to see her reaction. The smile was still there!! She loved it and we ended up going quite a few times. Of course Van never stopped going. He would tube down, attach his tow rope, and by the 3rd or 4th time, the workers would grab his rope off the line and swing him around and down the hill without him having to ever get out!!!