I tried to take my son sledding the other day. It’s been cold out & there looked to be a bit of snow up on the mountain so we were both excited. He may have been a bit more excited than I was because it would have been his first sledding adventure. It was easy to see he was really worked up about the entire thing for several days leading up to our planned trip to the snow.
He had been talking about building a snow man. He imagined that the snow man would have a carrot nose and a scarf, a hat, rocks for eyes & he even dreamed of putting a 4th snowball section in the snowman so he could be extra tall. He wanted to make a snow angel which he learned about during a Christmas movie we all watched together. He was interested in a snow ball fight. Most importantly, he wanted to go enjoy the freedom of riding a super fast sled down the mountain as fast as we could manage.
It was going to be epic. The morning we were goin to head up the mountain we got a late start. We wanted to have some cinnamon rolls when we woke up but as normal we were running low on milk. I went to the store while my wife started the baking and it was well worth it because those rolls ended up being the best part of the day. After we were done with breakfast we still had to get dressed & prepare everything we needed to bring with us.
It isn’t easy to get a family ready for a day trip to the mountain to play in the snow. My wife & I were easily ready to leave in a timely fashion but everyone else took their own sweet time. After I had my stuff packed along with all of the sleds & an extra coat for everyone, I went on about preparing the snacks for the day. It takes enough food to feed a small army to feed my family on a road trip so we had a lot of choices… As I was taking care of these other things my wife was putting layer after layer on our youngest child. Of course, once she was done she had to start over due to a much needed bathroom break after getting dressed.
When we finally hit the road it was getting so late I was not sure if we would get more than an hour of sledding in before we had to head home. It was actually much worse. When we got there it turned out that the only snow to be found was at an elevation we could not access without paying the ski resort fees of $30.00 per person per hour. It would have cost us too much so we had no other choice but to turn around & head home. We were all devastated. Some more than others…