By Signe Bennike

Yes, how do you do it best?

That is definitely a really good question. In everyday life in Denmark, before everything about a life in the Alps came into place, we really enjoyed grandparents who could pick up Noah from the nursery about once a week. Grandma lives only small 20 min from us and it made it all a lot easier if a work day dragged out or we both had late breaks.

It is no secret that I stood very much with Noah himself, many evenings from Noah was born and until we left for La Rosiere in November 2019.

Before we went to La Rosiere, Jacob worked as a chef Restaurant Jægerhuset where he usually only had 2-3 evenings a week at home.

It all too quickly became a hamster wheel for us. This was despite the fact that for a few years before we became parents, we had been full-time self-employed and had really enjoyed being able to dispose of one's own time. We suddenly couldn't do it anymore and I think it was really hard.

When we later talked about how life in our "carousel" or hamster wheel if you will, has been for us, well then it has just been an eye opener, for what we have always talked about; What would life in the Alps look like?

We have not yet tried more than just 4-5 months in the Alps, far away from family and friends - but we can easily describe and tell more about that period.

Before we traveled to La Rosiere, we had contacted the municipality and received approval that Noah could start in a French nursery per. 1/12 and it was just absolutely perfect. But… Just two days after arriving at La Rosiere and thus only 4 days before Noah should actually have started we got what I think was the worst mail of the year… .. Noah's place was still not approved.
I broke down, completely. Because how do you manage just two hotels, with almost twenty employees, of which one hotel is BRAND NEW with NEW concept and EVERYTHING, while you have to have your 2.5 year old son in tow full time.

Ja altså, jeg elsker Noah overalt på jorden, men han er jo en dreng der er meget søn af sin far, hvilket vil sige der altid skal være fuld knald på. 😉

I already had a huge hard time being on maternity leave full time and studying as well as writing my bachelor while I had Noah on my arm. It does not make me the "mother of today" (yes, I apologize for prejudice), where you go home for a year and enjoy it all. No, on the contrary. I could have just settled for a few months maternity leave.

When Noah started in the nursery at the age of 7.5 months, it was amazing! I enjoyed it! It was like a new chapter started and we could start a family right. Hats off to the mothers who can go home with their children full time. It's just really not me. And it's not me either when we're in the Alps…

Well why then do this, you might be thinking?
Yes, I'm going to tell you.
It is different. Completely different.

In the Alps, you do not live a life where the alarm clock rings at 06.00 every morning, so that the whole house has to get up, have a morning together, have time to drop off the child in the nursery at no later than 07.25, to get to work and meeting at 08.00. Then you work for eight hours, have free time at. 16.00 and can return at the earliest at 16.30 to pick up. Then you have to go home, the time is at least 16.45, you have to make dinner, have fun with the child, wash clothes, clean up after a perhaps a little too hectic morning. Maybe have the child in the shower and well yes, then there was just that training you really also wanted to achieve because, otherwise that mother-body will never be ready to bake another child.

And that's how the days can go. Again and again and again and again …… On the weekends, which we, incidentally, almost only had together as a family, every third weekend, you can not bear to see either friends or family, because now we finally had a day without plans, just the three of us. But then there are family birthdays, parties, weddings, parties in your own company .. and blah blah blah.

Time goes by and in the end, something new just has to happen for everyday life to be cohesive, without it being what mentally retarded hamster wheels have to go over and over again.

Back to the track, then comes "well how do we make family life stick together far away from family and friends" .. We make it quite simple.

Integrates Noah into pretty much everything we do.

The biological family that we have at home in Denmark is worth its weight in gold. They visit us as often as they can. Noah facets and recognizes all family members. But… His family in the Alps. It's the Skinetworks family. It's the team. Our full team of HP (Hotel staff), kitchen staff and guides. The young people we form as a big family for them and not least us, the months we are together.

Because that's what we become. A family.

La Rosiere 19/20 ski family <3

It sounds strange, but that's what we'll be and we would not be without it at all.
I hope this post did not get too many people on their toes, but I came out with my words.

Life is too short to not just live it to the fullest.
Do with life what YOU feel for.
We feel that it should be lived in the Alps for as long as WE feel like it.

Thanks for reading.

EN