Dashing through the snow

Aaron and I were recently recalling the first winter Kayla could go sledding, she was 1.5 years old. We remember it vividly (for a number of reasons) one of them being because we were so excited to take her sledding for the first time. It took probably an hour for all of us to get bundled up - Kristi was with us too - and then, since we didn't have our own 2-person sleds yet, we went to the neighbors and borrowed a few of theirs. Then, an hour after we had the spontaneous idea to go sledding, we finally got to the hill less than a mile from our home. We loaded Kayla and Kristi onto the sled and sent them sailing down the loooooooong hill. When Kayla got to the bottom of the hill, she turned around to look back up at us and kept signing "All done". Poor girl. No more than 10 minutes after picking up the sleds we returned them (much to the surprise of our neighbors) and got back home. So as not to scar her permanently we pulled her on a sled around our yard just to make sure she didn't entirely hate sledding. Evidently we didn't scar her because she loves winter AND snow. We didn't have much opportunity to go sledding last winter so we look forward to a lot of sledding this year!

This weekend we received our first lasting snowfall of the season. It was only about 2 inches, but still, that's enough for F-U-N. Since it's Girls Day, just Kayla and I got all bundled up and headed out - shoveled the driveway, had a snow fight, played on the playset, went on a hike in the woods and by then Mama was COLD! The thermometer read "20 degrees" so hot cocoa, cheese toasties, tomato soup and pajamas did a good job of warming us up.

 There's so much snow everywhere to shovel!

 Like all this grass...

 ... and all the snow on the playset.