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Sledding

Last weekend half the neighborhood came out to the "big hill" in our neighborhood and went sledding. It made sense: there were clearly not going to be any people driving on it for a while. This snow reminds me again why flexible flyers exist: they were just perfect on the ice. I never saw the point of them in MN, but they work great down here.

One of our problems was that we only had the "sledge" that Michael made (here I would insert a picture if I were technically inclined). It works fine for puling kids, but not so well for going down the hill---it kept getting caught, going sideways (a result of warped 2x4s, as well as no varnish yet). Eleanor helped out by running ahead of Luke and Amanda on the sledge, which kept it going and kept it reasonably straight. However, Luke fell off, banged his shoulder up quite nicely, and after that refused to sit on the sledge if it was heading even remotely downhill, even when Daddy was pulling it.

There were plenty of sleds around, though. Amanda wormed her way onto several rides by being winsome. Eleanor took a few rides down on a single sled. Amanda managed to cut her chin by going into the drainage ditch and running into the culvert under a driveway. Luke finally consented to sit on my lap on a saucer sled while we went down the hill---I think it was just as well the snow was starting to get sticky and we didn't go very fast. We saw the flexible flyers shooting past us, and Luke was completely confused about why our sled stopped. Screaming ensued, and so we went home.

When we went sledding, I don't remember all the parents coming out and playing too. But maybe that's because we had snow for 6 months (or so, I could be misremembering =) of the year, and it wasn't a novelty. In this case, the parents were on the sleds, leading the trains of 7 sleds hooked together, or standing at the side chatting and trying to keep kids from running in to each other or the occasional car that drove across the bottom of the hill. On the one hand, it seems very un-"Free range" of us. On the other hand, the parents deserve some fun too!

Note to self: pick up a couple sleds for next year.

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