Snow Place Like Home

As I mentioned yesterday, the snow wasn't especially good packing snow. But that didn't stop us from managing to build a snowman anyway. We used snow off the driveway that was partially melted and thus stuck together better. For some reason when I was looking at the snowman we created the head seemed disproportionately smaller than the rest of the body giving it the look of a witch doctor shrunken head feel, but in the picture the head doesn't look that bad. Maybe it's the angle.


The kids had school, but it started an hour late. Amazingly the road in our cul-de-sac was better than the main road in our neighborhood (which was a disaster to try and drive on).


I promised the kids I would come home early from work so we could get in some more sledding. I figured in all likelihood this was going to be the last snow of the season so I should make an effort to go out with them.


We had to switch sledding paths. The path we created yesterday had been just missing one of the trees as they came down, but today something had shifted just enough so that every run they were doing was heading straight for that tree. So we tried a new starting location. This new one required navigation between more trees further on, but had less trees near the start.


In the above picture it might be hard to tell, but Quinn is heading straight for a tree. Sadly I didn't keep taking pictures because I was afraid he was about to get seriously injured and was preparing to run down to him, but I wish I had been able to get a photo (or film) of what happened next. He was moving at a fairly good clip, so when the tube hit the tree, it collapsed and bunched up. Then it rebounded and snapped away from the tree. The unbunching of the tube actually shot Quinn about a foot or so into the air (much like he had just bounced on a trampoline) while the sled sped out from under him causing him to come crashing down into the snow. He was a pretty good sport about it (first being a bit upset about it, but then once he thought about what had happened I think he decided it was rather cool).


Eventually I was forced (forced I tell you!) to try it myself. As you can see I was frantically trying to steer the thing from the start to avoid the trees. I managed to successfully avoid them both this time and on subsequent runs where I had Catherine with me.


And speaking of Catherine, she didn't want to do the sledding so much as just play in the snow. Her favorite thing seemed to be throwing snow balls (or just handfuls of snow) at me. I would tell her not to throw it at me while I had the camera, and she would say "Ooookay" in that sweet little voice, then soon as I would turn around she would throw more at me.




For some reason Catherine's idea of fun was to roll down the hill instead of sledding. She would act like a log rolling down the hill. I can't imagine why that's fun, but she kept doing it (you can tell she got snow everywhere).


The kids even tried using those newer sleds that Ginger bought for them. They didn't work quite as well as the tube, but they didn't seem to mind. Quinn would intentionally maneuver his so that he would go over a drainage pipe on the way down and perform a minor jump.


All in all it was a really fun time, and I'm really glad I came home to go out with the kids.