As a parent, anything that makes skiing with my family easier is a treat—and when that added ease involves treats, you know I’m in.

Obviously, I know enough about skiing with kids to have an arsenal of bribes—candy in my jacket pocket, and plenty of cash on hand for cocoa and cookie breaks. And that’s for an activity the kids enjoy. However, that enjoyable activity involves something that my kids consider a necessary evil—shopping.

Fortunately, Deer Valley has my back—and yours, too. The friendly staff at NextGen DV also runs Quincy’s, the attached self-serve frozen yogurt shop.

They know that if we’re running in to buy ski gloves, because, say, Lance’s hands were cold on the hill (as happened one recent day), that he wants the process to be quick and painless. And they do it one better—because they make it fun. The team in NextGen DV has a knack for making the kids feel like they are the central decision-maker in the purchasing process, while keeping the parents in the loop. And–this is key—since the yogurt shop is at the front of the store, it’s very easy for the ultimate parenting deal to be struck on the way in: “If you’re cooperative, you will be rewarded.”

We figured out one more way to make all the angst of shopping go away—we bring friends. It didn’t take much to coordinate with a couple of other families for some “get it done” shopping time—which quickly turned into lots of laughs as the kids tried on goofy hats, our boys’ boys goofed off in some pink helmets (don’t tell them I said this, but they looked fetching in pink!), and the girly girls got to play dress up all afternoon.