Too Nice to be Inside

Last Thursday Jake told me, "It's going to be really nice on Saturday. About 32 degrees. I've been watching the weather. It's going to be a great day to be outside!" I'd been watching the weather too and had brainstormed that if Saturday ended up as nice as they were saying then we should all be outside.

So, Saturday we got our snow gear on and headed to Lion's Park to go sledding. It was actually closer to 40 degrees by the time we got there and I thought we'd all be sledding without jackets or hats, but the top of the hill proved to have quite a wind and we stayed bundled.

It was actually really muddy at the top so it felt like you were halfway down the hill by the time you got settled in a sled. We noticed Maddie had a few mud stains on her face and only made things worse when she went to wipe them off with her filthy gloves...

Still fun though. There's always some jumps scattered around that someone has taken the time to create. And Jake ALWAYS wants to go off the one that is about as tall as him. And then we ALWAYS tell him we didn't plan an ER visit into our schedule.

With the melting snow and wind it was occasionally hard to get back up the hill - more than once we were sliding back down on our butts after almost reaching the top. Unfortunately my camera was never ready for those glamorous moments.

I did manage to catch Jake by surprise when I pushed him down the hill. His revenge came when I somehow got my glove caught under his sled and he managed to drag it halfway down the hill with him...

Towards the end Madison thought it would be fun to try to sled like penguins - on their bellies. Soon they had completely ditched the sleds. They did NOT try to go off jumps when sledding like this though!

The last run of the morning consisted of a race - that we totally weren't prepared for. Mike and I each laid on a sled. Maddie was going to lay on top of Mike and Jake lay on top of me and we'd race to the bottom. Surprisingly Jake had other ideas. Mike and Maddie started on their race and Jake decided he was going to take a running leap onto me, except he forgot to tell me. So, as I'm about to wonder where he is, I feel this "PLOP" and all air rushed out of me and we were headed to the bottom. Mike and Maddie in their glory had ended up going way faster than they thought and flew over the built up snow along the walking path and had a heavy landing for Mike which he thought he'd feel the next day. At the last second when I saw that I knew it wasn't how I wanted to end the morning so I steered Jake and I too quickly and we ended up rolling down the last bit of the hill.