Second Tree Blog » sledding

A Neighborhood Sledfest

Tim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:13:25 +0000

Last weekend — starting on Friday, actually — we got just over a foot of snow. That was enough to make for plenty of outdoor activity, yet not so much as to keep us truly snowbound at home. On Saturday after lunch, Julie headed down to the end of our street with our kids and some of the neighbors for some sliding fun. Can you spot our kids amongst the dots of color?

That’s Carson up at the top with the green saucer, Benton over to the right with the blue saucer and orange coat, and Alana at the bottom left with her face hidden behind a yellow sled. Also in the picture are Malachi (top center), his brother, Ezra (en route down the slope and obscured by the flying snow), Austin and Austin (the two boys in gray coats), and Caroline (foreground). You can check out the full set (31 pictures) in the Flickr set. Here are just a few Wilson-centric pictures from the day.

Benton takes a turn on the snowboard

Carson does the same

Alana giggles her way down the hill…

…and is still smiling after she wipes out

Carson does a jump…with no hands

And even Julie gets into the action

Benton on the Farm

Tim — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:02:40 +0000

I really am taking the easy way out with these posts from our trip to West Virginia last weekend! I already posted the video of Benton on the 4-wheeler, but I snapped a few other pictures that seemed worth sharing.

Going up…

…and going down

Pausing for a picture en route to the river with Julie and Molly

Hanging out and relaxing

Carson on the Farm

Tim — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:24:57 +0000

And…a few pictures of Carson from our West Virginia adventures last weekend.

Sledding

Hanging Out with Army Men and Legos in Grandpa’s Chair…While Benton Draws a Laser Bead

Icicle
I got to carry this 20-lb chunk of frozen water all the way back to the farmhouse (including up a lengthy, snowy, wooded incline) so that he could show it off…before busting it into pieces against a tree.

Molly Goes Sledding

Tim — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:35:03 +0000

We headed to West Virginia for the weekend and were surprised when it snowed for most of the day on Saturday. Pleasantly surprised! The boys barely waited until the ground was covered before heading out to slide down the hill, despite the 12-degree weather.

Julie got the idea to give Molly a ride down the hill. Never one to turn down affection, Molly trotted right over to Julie when she called her…while seated on a blue collapsible sled. A tight grip, some nudging with Julie’s feet, and they were off!

Julie’s description: “She squirmed the whole time!” (ya’ THINK?!)

The experience had Molly fired up for a bit, shown here racing around several minutes after the ride.

Observing Molly over the remainder of the weekend, the experience clearly (re-)cemented Julie’s status as “alpha” in the Wilson pack — she stayed close to Julie for the rest of the trip!

More pictures to come!

Snow + Hills = Hours and Hours of Fun

Tim — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:29:00 +0000

When we arrived Thursday late afternoon, the temperature was hovering around 20 degrees. I got everything turned on, and we thought we were in good shape. It wasn’t until after dark that we realized that there was no hot water — although the gas was on, it had really low pressure, which was enough to turn on the flames on the water heater (it’s a tankless system — when you turn on hot water in the house, the flames come on in the heater and it heats the water as it passes from the pump to the faucets), but not enough to turn them on high enough to actually heat the water. Fortunately, Bob had shown me where “they occasionally shut off the flow of gas to the house to build up pressure on the one well — happens maybe once a year” (there are two gas wells that he’s tapped off of, and one of them was open to the house, but the other was not). Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying quite as much attention as I should have when he showed me which well that was. The only ATV available was the older one, which is 2-wheel drive and not all that great on the snow. Nonetheless, I headed out to see if the well had indeed been closed off. I overshot the turnoff to the well I needed to go to and went to a different well. THAT didn’t look familiar! I backtracked, got stuck a couple of times, but ultimately found the well, turned it on, and we were in business. Well. Sort of. It was too late for the heater to catch up with the dropping temperatures, so we didn’t top 65 degrees in the farmhouse that night!

The forecast was for the weather to warm up into the 40s by late Friday (it wound up being more like Saturday), so both boys headed out in the dark on Thursday night to satiate their need for speed. And, on Friday, we were surprised by the arrival of their cousins, who stayed for the weekend.

There was sledding on various hills (below are the second set of hills they hit — that’s Uncle Brett at the top of the hill about to take a brief spin as a “kid” before heading back home):

I swear Benton would spend more time describing what he’d done or was going to do than he would actually doing something if there was an adult within a half-mile:

I learned to both keep my distance and to heavily advocate for the light saucers, lest I be comandeered as the equipment lift:

And even Alana got into the action. This quickly progressed from me pulling her up/down some gentle slopes to me running down some steeper slopes trying to keep up with her and hoping like crazy that I didn’t break a limb.