Beautiful By Sunset...Scary Fun By Day!

The last snowstorm we had was supposed to dump another two feet on us, instead it snowed a short while and then turned to a sleet/snow mix for about 8 inches. It then turned bitterly cold again for a few days and the wind whipped through the area for days. The combination left us with a very hard, shiny, slippery snowcover surface.

Lex noticed one evening how beautiful the sunset light was reflecting on the icy snow surface and told me I should take some pictures. Well she has a great artistic eye for photography (really) so I just had to go and look at what she was seeing, and this is what she saw(as always, click to enlarge the images)...

There is so much beauty in nature, in so many places in so many forms. Ok, that's the 'Beautiful By Sunset' part. Now for the 'Scary Fun By Day' part!We love to slide, one of our favorite winter activities, and we are lucky enough to have a great sliding hill as part of our back yard which gets lots of use. But when it is sooooo slippery that it can't be walked up, the sleds have to be put away. Far to dangerous to sled on. The kids are all extreme sliders and have been schooled about 'rolling out' when they are going too fast and a crash is imminent, (like into the house or woods/trees, etc :) ). When conditions are like this even to bail out is futile, for once the speed is achieved you would still keep going 'sled speed' after abandoning the sled. These conditions make for some of the funnest sliding ever though...sliding on your butt, tummy, whatever! It's tricky to get up the hill, you have to kick 'toe holes' in every step of the way and one mis-step sends you sliding back down the hill in a fashion you don't want to!

Here are Lex and Emi heading up:

And here is Lex coming down. There is very little control once you let go and start down, you just have to hope you have a good line!!

And one of my rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed Emi after some extreme butt-sliding :)