Since I had the extra day off (school was canceled due to the New Year's Eve blizzard) and since we had lots of snow, I took the boys sledding.  This also included F---, Sasha's best friend.  Kala, who doesn't like sledding very much, stayed home.

The sled hill wasn't at all crowded yet, since we were there after breakfast.  Mackie was too little to go down by himself, and here we ran into a problem with having only one adult.  Aran isn't very comfortable sledding on his own, either.  I went down with Aran once and then told him he had to go down by himself after that.  He went down twice more and declared that he was done.  He spent quite a lot of time wandering around the top of the hill, staring at a brick will, which made me unhappy.

Mackie and I went down a number of times without mishap.  As usual, someone had built a giant snow ramp in the exact center of the hill.  I want to beat these people with their own shovels.  I have no objection to snow ramps, but they should be put further to the side where kids with less control over their sleds are less likely to hit them.  In any case, Sasha hit the ramp--I think on purpose--at full speed, flew a couple miles through the air, and wiped out spectacularly when he landed.  He earned several hundred Cool Points from the onlookers, though he looked like someone dipped him in powdered sugar.  He was uninjured, if a bit sore.

Eventually, it was time to leave.  This actually turned out to be a problem. The park service's budget has clearly been cut because the parking area had only been give a pre-emptory swipe with a snowplow.  The road outside the lot had been plowed powerfully, however, and an enormous pile of slushy snow had built up at the entrance.  When I tried to exit, I got stuck.  I managed to back out of it, but only barely.  I finally managed to get out by backing way up and using the car as a battering ram to explode through it.

And then home.

--Steven