People Doing Things in Cold Weather

Does it seem like a long time that I've been blogging about various get-togethers with my extended family? That's because it has been a long time--a whole month of celebrating. The holidays are only now really wrapping up here, because soon my sister and her family will have to go back to Australia. Ever since they've been in the US, we've all been traveling from state to state to meet up in the same group and drink wine, chat, and play Rock Band. From Florida, to Georgia, to North Carolina, the party caravan rolls. This past week we all went to the mountain house to play in the snow. It was lovely and COLD up there--in the single digits at night and the teens during the day. I know that many of you who live on the ice planet Hoth are thinking, "Well Becky, that sounds delightfully balmy to me!" Understand that we are not accustomed to such. To me, "cold" is the 30's. The 20's is "totally freezing" and below that is "Oh my God I can't feel my ass and I think I just died but how would I know because my soul has cracked into a thousand brittle pieces."

We didn't let the temperature slow us down, though, because it was too beautiful outside and there was too much fun to be had. Many hours were spent, I kid you not, with all the children inside while the adults were out playing.

The guys invented a new form of sledding. I'm thinking we'll call it extreme cross country sledwhacking. It's just an exhibition sport in Vancouver this year, but look for us to medal in 2014. It combines the best of hiking, sledding, and brush-clearing. Just up the hill from the house, the road hadn't been driven on. We discovered that by tacking and making a few turns, you could sled halfway down the dang mountain. Dave did it in a couple runs, so Matt decided to try to go all the way. Jason started him with a push.

We watched him swoosh down and around the first curve. Then we waited. And waited. We figured he would have a five minute walk back up. So we waited some more. Then we called for him. Silence. By now I was picturing him wrapped around a tree. So Dave went after him. Jason and I waited for them both. After a few minutes we realized that we'd sent another person without a cell phone into the unknown, and that this was starting to feel like a horror movie where the people decide to split up. So Jason and I headed down the road, and finally espied them.



Matt had gotten down to the bottom of the hill where the road crosses a creek, and instead of stopping, he took a right turn onto a path through the woods, and sledded along the creek, hacking at brambles as he went straight on into the heart of darkness. Rugged!

Shortly after that, my nose froze and fell off. And no worries, we had given the kids plenty of time with the sled before the grown-ups broke it. Did y'all have fun with your snow days?

More pics are here, if you haven't had enough of my family yet. It's okay if you have, that feeling is normal.