Today we woke up to snow. Olivia decided she wanted to ski with us today, so we only had to prepare Avery for ski school. Avery has been such a champ as it relates to ski school. Never a complaint; he seems to really have a good time -- from the first day I put him on the bus in the morning. He goes, marches to the back of the bus on his own, sits down, smiles, and waves! Every day he gets dropped off at the hotel at 5:30pm (after leaving at 9am in the morning), he is in a great mood with a smile on his face.
We didn't really have a plan today. The lack of visibility makes it very difficult to ski here since much of the terrain is bowl-like. Josh drove down the road to visit Avery in the morning, and to check in with his instructor to see how he was doing. According to Pierre Manuel (PM for short), Avery has been a star. He's already moved up a group. Josh said he looked so good on skis that he didn't recognize him at first.
When Josh returned from Les Planards (site of Avery's ski school), and without any better ideas, we headed out for L'Argentiere again. But not before Charlotte almost back-talked her way in to spending a day in the hotel room. In the end, I'm not sure what the turning point was for allowing her in the car and onto the slopes, but needless to say she was on serious probation.
As we suspected, once at Les Grands Montets, it was difficult to see in the snow cloud. But we took the tram up, and took a run before taking a lunch break. Having Olivia with us added another dimension (of cuteness) and it was fun to ski with her -- even if she did her share of complaining. We hoped it would clear up a bit during lunch like yesterday, but no such luck. Because it had been coming down all day, the snow conditions were amazing; if only we could see, we could have really enjoyed oursevles. This way, we were all a bit tentative, but enjoyed the challenge nonetheless. 
Today we had a taste of French incompetence. Olivia slipped getting on a lift (the entry point was completely icy because the lift operator had prevented it from becoming icy by scraping or shoveling snow on to the area), the lift operator hadn't slowed the lift down for Olivia in the first place, and then Josh and I had to yell for him to stop the lift before it knocked all of us over. I think he was sitting comfortably in his hut having a cigarette. I have definitely noticed the laissez-fare attitude of the Chamonix resort employees. No one offers to help if the lift pass (which opens a gate electronically) is not working. None of the lift operators are EVER outside actually helping skiers on the lift so that the chair doesn't slam into the backs of their legs. Of course, that means no one is repositioning the seat of the chairlift (up and down) to minimize snow and rain accumulation (so that your ski pants don't get soaked through from sitting on wet chairs all day). None of the care and responsibility demonstrated by U.S. "lifties" are on display here. In fact, there is nothing LESS that the Chamonix lift operators could do unless they somehow kill you. On our next lap around on the same chair, Josh made sure the liftie slowed the chair down first. Then he came out of his hut to let us know that he'd been working at this job for 16 years. My point exactly - incompetence prevails.
Instead of improving, the conditions grew worse after 3pm, so we made our way down...all the way down... from the top of the mountain.
Again, the kids swam, Josh took a sauna, I took a bath and we enjoyed a snack (chips and sesame sticks) in our room before going down to dinner at our hotel.
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