Snow Sailing!

We have been having the stormiest spring I have experienced since I've lived here, with a storm every other day or so for the last couple weeks. But out of a crazy windy storm today was borne an exciting and perfect day for a fun arctic activity: sailing across the snow in a sled. A couple things have to come together to make this happen: hard snow (which was a given with these warm to freezing temps we've been having, which makes the snow melt and then freeze into a hard icy layer on top when the temp goes back down), good visibility, since it's dangerous to play out far from home in bad visibility (the storm we had today had a LOT of snow and just about zero visibility at some points, but it all cleared out by 4:pm), and a huge wind -- yeah, I'd say 53 knots is a strong wind!

Inez, Jasmine, Esther & I experimented with this yesterday, and while the kids just zoomed along like magic -- especially when they decided to use another plastic sled instead of the tarp -- it wasn't as dream-like for the adults, who were kinda heavy... but, hey, we still got to slide along, albeit slowly. But, man, holding up that tarp sure makes the arms tired! I realized I am getting old today when I got out of bed and between my arms being sore from holding the tarp & sleds (&Esther, at points!) against the wind, and being sore from slipping and falling on the snow-covered ice at lunchtime yesterday (after which the wind blew me several feet along the ground -- crazy!), my body is rejecting me, which is what my dad used to say. All in all, though, a fabulous fun activity. I loved hearing Esther and Jasmine's giggles!

In other news, Iris crawled her first crawl steps yesterday. *sigh*