Growing up, I used to look forward to winter some years primarily because I wasn’t required to shovel the driveway and I loved to sled. I spent a good part of my youth on the little hills behind our house trying to perfect my sledding techniques. It’s been ages now since I’ve mounted a hill in the winter, but we figured it was time to pass the tradition on to our kids.
We actually tried to sled late last year, until we realized we didn’t have any sleds and no stores carried them in March. So we tried for the first time today. Becky asked if we should bring Amelia along since she was in the middle of a meltdown, but I figured she’d have fun, so why not? After the 15 minutes it took to get everyone properly attired for a -5 degree day, we headed to the only hill in our town. This hill sits right next to the man-made lake in town, and it’s only there because it contains the land that was dug up to make the lake. It’s probably about a 60-70 foot high hill.
We got up to the hill and I decided to go down with Amelia as Becky went down with Katie. Like an idiot, I kept my feet within the sled, because that’s how you go faster. About 2/3 of the way down the hill I hit a bad patch and wiped out, falling out of the sled and ejecting Amelia too. She ended up with a face-full of snow and a stunned look on her face. Katie and Becky made it all the way down, but Katie got sprayed in the face with snow on the end of the run, and decided this wasn’t any fun. So ended our trip to the only hill in town for sledding. We weren’t ready for the major leagues quite yet.
Once we got home, Katie wanted to go help me shovel since we’ve gotten over a foot of snow in the last week and I hdan’t completely cleared the driveway. Then I figured, I had made a nice 5 foot pile of snow on the side of the driveway so we might as well try sledding down that. Well that was the ticket. Katie now loves sledding just like her daddy, she just needs a little smaller hill.
Eric's space 