I’ll admit it:  I’m a lazy weekend kind of gal.  Nothing makes me happier than a pajama day that lasts until 1:59 p.m. (hey!  Look at that!  It’s a weekend and it’s 1:59 as I’m writing and I’m still in my pajamas!).  But even the world’s coziest, laziest parents have to get off their duffs sometimes, and if you’re going to get off your duff, taking the kids away somewhere where they can get lots of fresh air and exercise is definitely the ticket.

But if you’re going to do the spring skiing thing, remember these tips:

1)     Keep all the ski stuff in one place, or you will never find it when you are ready to get out of your pajamas and head out the door.  Now, that place is going to need to be a big place, given the fact that kids need parkas and ski pants and goggles and balaclavas and three pairs of gloves and scarves and . . .

2)    Put all of that stuff into the car in a laundry basket.  What’s that you say? You’re self-conscious about walking through the hotel lobby carrying a laundry basket?  Well, keep in mind the following:  Laundry baskets do not need to zip.  They overflow very nicely.  You will never see the guests in the hotel lobby again.  Hotel staff have seen it all.  And all of the dirty laundry can go right back into the basket at the end of the trip, allowing you to drop it straight into the laundry room.  Nice.

3)    Head to a small ski hill no more than two hours’ drive from your house.  Why small? Because the littlest member of your family will be able to roll down the hill safely.  Why close?  Because at the end of the ski weekend, you will be too tired and your kids will be too cranky to drive one minute farther.

4)    Pick a SuperBowl or Olympic weekend.  Then everyone will be home watching and no one will be at the small close ski hill skiing.  If you’re super lucky, your kids will be the only kids in their ski school groups and will, by the end of the day, be far better skiers than you are.

5)    Stay at a suites hotel near the mountain.  We like Ski Roundtop and Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania, and both of these have Homewood Suites hotels nearby.  The rooms are giant and have plenty of space for the five or six laundry baskets of stuff we’ve lugged along.  The breakfasts are even bigger and fill a kid’s gut for at least thirty-nine minutes of skiing.

6)    Stick granola bars in the kids’ pockets.  Twenty or thirty per kid should do it.

7)    Take bandaids.  Each kid in your party will either 1) scrape a knee getting off the chair lift or 2) do a face plant in some icy snow with resulting cut chins or 3) crash into another kid who needs some bandaids, too, but his mom forgot.

8)    Memorialize the occasion.  Spring skiing makes for hilarious photos.  Do not miss out on the chance to humiliate your child later in life with a photo of his court jester ski hat.