Skiing as a profession?

So I've been planning out what my kids will do in life. You know, picking their careers and such, maybe even focused on what kinda $bread$ they can make. Because let's face it, a fireman's and a part-time environmental scientist salary's may not pave the golden retirement I have envisioned. You know what I'm talking about...your kid making big money, taking care of you as you start to get grumpy and decay. There's a big difference between me living with them or putting my as up in a swanky assisted living facility.




As I daydreamed, I stumbled across unofficialnetworks.com article on skier Bode Miller's 100 foot yacht being for sale. Hmmm...

Ding, the light bulb lit up so to speak. It might be a dim light but hey, if the likes of Bode Miller and Jon Olsson can make millions skiing, why can't my kids? Skiers have been racking up big pay checks and living lavish lifestyles for years. I mean look at

Jon Olsson knows how to ride in style to the ski hill

Bode is reportedly worth $8 million dollars. And Lindsey Vonn's networth is $3 million dollars! And what about good old Alberto Tomba, he was an international player no doubt! But don't get me wrong, some skiers like Tanner Hall remind me of straight up thugs.

What really spurred this whole stupid tangent was the huge smiles that I saw last week when I took my girls skiing separately up at Snowbowl. Being the first day of the year on skis, new 93cm skis to be exact, they were pretty excited. Warm up runs on the rope tow instilled the confidence they needed. Then up top with a little help from a ski leash, they were destroying beginner and intermediate runs.

Somehow I came across this ski coaching article, Don't Praise your children. What's that you said? At first by reading the title, I thought it would be total bullshit. But afterwards, it probably has some really good points, like this one:

• Too much praise of any sort can also be unhealthy. Research has found that students who were lavished with praise were more cautious in their responses to questions, had less confidence in their answers, were less persistent in difficult assignments, and less willing to share their ideas. 

I leave you with a few minutes of floating the mild slopes of Snowbowl with my five year olds. I'm sure most of you detected the bit of my sarcasm, but if not, you might need to have your meter calibrated. The girls at this point are looking to be a veterinarian and a police officer. We're going to need to work on one of those professions.