Sledding

On Tuesday last week, Kevin and I decided to take Charlotte sledding. We noticed some kids using the hill by our house that goes down into the lake (frozen of course). So, rather than going to a different spot, like we always do we decided to just walk down the street and see what this hill was all about. My goodness, we certainly were in for an adventure. Getting there was pretty painless. We decided to bring the dogs with and let them run around. Kevin was in charge of the dogs and I was in charge of Charlotte. Being pregnant, the viable option of course was to bring Charlotte on the sled to the hill. I pulled her a couple blocks down the street to the hill and she seemed to like it just fine. So I thought, wow this is going pretty good, no crying yet. Well, we get to the hill and the dogs are just having a hay day with the space to run around. I decide it's time to just bite the bullet and go down the hill. Thinking that this hill wouldn't be nearly as fast nor steep as the one we're used to, I just plopped Charlotte between my legs on the sled and headed down for, what I thought would be a simple jont down the hill. I was definitely mistaken. This hill packed much more punch than I thought. We were going to fast, and certainly not perfectly straight down the hill. To avoid tipping over, I decided to put my put out to slow us down. Well, poor Charlotte, although she was safely on the sled at the bottom of the hill, was covered in snow. My clever slowing skills sprayed snow all over her face. At first she was shocked and didn't do anything but then realized her face was covered in cold snow and she just had a fit....as I would too. Nonetheless, this first adventure down the hill was not so positive for Charlotte so she really wanted nothing to do with sledding anymore. In fact she just wanted to be carried and to go home. We decided to stick it out, for nothing more than to justify that it took us about 15 minutes to actually get dressed for this excursion. Kevin decided to take her down with him and as you can see from the picture, Charlotte wasn't exactly enjoying it. After a couple more turns down the hill, which I loved by the way. I have certainly gone sledding in years past but for some reason, this year was much more fun. I don't know how the baby felt about it, but I definitely had fun!

Well, as were were to head back Kevin is trying to coral the dogs and I am trying to get Charlotte to sit on the sled so I can pull her back. Charlotte of course was now terrified of the sled and was not interested in sitting in it by herself. There was now way I could carry her up the hill and walk her back home.....I'm rather big now so that was just out of the question. There was no way Kevin was going to be able to carry her up the hill and back and also bring the dogs back on the double leash. So, I had no choice but to basically force her to sit on the sled. I laid her down and she refused to get up. So, the pictures you see of her lying down on the sled were out of protest and also included screaming and crying. It's too bad pictures can't capture everything that's going on. As I'm trying to get her up the hill, we're almost at the top, Charlotte decides she doesn't want to ride on the sled, she tries to get out. I am starting to fall backwards on the hill and Kevin is trying to help both of us. Well, in the meantime, somehow the dogs leashes are wrapped around my legs at least twice and Charlotte has kicked her boot off and completely unaware to us has a bare foot stuck in the snow. Honestly, it was so chaotic and ridiculous I was laughing so hard, which made it of course harder to rectify the situation.
Well, the only way to get home was to have Charlotte sit between my legs on the sled and see if the dogs would pull us. While my husband is strong, pulling a 7 month pregnant woman and her 34 lb. child would not have been easy. So, we basically tied the rope to the leashes and Kevin held on and they pulled us home. The images you see of the back of Kevin and the dogs are from me. I just couldn't believe these dogs could do this. In fact, it was down right cool. It was a perfect ending to a somewhat disastrous sledding trip.