Our White Christmas

How fun to get to have a white Christmas this year. The kids loved it. They enjoyed tromping around in the snow, but the highlight was sledding. We went to a place with a rather steep hill. It was very cold and snowing, so I watched from a little bit of a distance with James warm in the car. John took Natalie and Andrew to the top of the hill and put them together on a sled. He got on a round disk and put himself behind them, holding onto their sled, so they could all go down together. I was watching with the camcorder. I was pretty nervous. The hill looked so steep and Natalie looked like she could fly off at any moment sitting out in front. I could hardly watch and told myself over and over, "John knows what he's doing. John knows what he's doing."

So, John pushes off and woosh...he is heavier than the kids so his disk whips around so they are all heading down the hill at top speed backwards. Natalie looked like she was about to bounce off the front (now the back) at any minute. But they made it down in one piece and I caught it all on tape. And the kids weren't scared to go down again. They didn't go to the top again, but they had a great time going down the lower half.

For a while, Natalie and Andrew were going down on the two-person sled. When they would get to the bottom, Andrew and John would walk back up, but Natalie would ride on the sled because she couldn't walk in her snowsuit and boots. She was sitting in the back and every time John was pulling her back up the hill it looked like she was going to topple over backwards any minute. And she did, once. But it didn't phase her. She LOVED sledding.

Here are a few clips from that day. Not of the first run--that is still on the camcorder. Listen for Natalie's laugh in the first clip and watch for Andrew's big grin. They were having so much fun!