Weekend fun

We've had temperatures below freezing for more than week now so the snow from last week is still lying around, trapping me and the girls at home. The plus side is that on the weekend we had clear skies so we decided to take the girls sledding.

J and her husband and 2 year old daughter came over for brunch to start the day which was fantastic, pancakes, croissants and lovely fresh rolls, I love Sunday brunches! Then we drove the hour to our local ski area, Winterberg. The girls were very cooperative and slept in the car, which they hardly ever do now days, and it was a beautiful drive through the snow covered pine forests and rolling hills.

The weather was wonderful, a crisp fresh cold with no moisture in the air, perfect for a day outside. We all had on our winter snow suits or ski suits and were not in the slightest bit cold until the sun went down at 16:30.

I was initially very nervous as the slope for sledding looked quite steep and I'd never been sledding before but I saw lots of other parents sledding with their toddlers and even saw one man with his toddler and a baby younger than our two so I was willing to give it a go. We hired 2 sleds and bought our lift cards (told you the slope was quite steep and long). Thankfully we found a slightly gentler alternative route for the steepest part of the slope which I always took, Z did do the main slope a couple of times after finding his sledding skills still intact. The hardest part of the whole day was carrying Enya and the sled while waiting in the queue for the ski lift (a chair lift that stopped to pick up passengers and again to let them off at the top), I thought my arm was going to drop off. Unfortunately the sled didn't have a backrest, so Enya (and Ciara) couldn't balance alone on it for long i.e. we couldn't just sit them on it and drag them behind us. The sledding was great fun, although once again I think I set records for the slowest descents possible but the important thing was Enya enjoyed it. Z went faster with Ciara but he was also slow in comparison to the other daredevils on the piste.

After 3 runs we went to the ski hut for hot chocolate and to feed the girls who were ravenous by this time, what with all the fresh air. Ciara was so hungry she kept trying to lick the table, yyyeeeeeuuuuch! She was also on a bit of a sugar high because they were playing music in the hut and Ciara was bobbing away in time to the music.

It was by now getting quite late so we quickly went for another 2 runs, the best part was that the queues were now non existent, but we stopped after 2 as it was getting a bit chilly. The girls were fantastic the whole time, they really enjoyed the down hill sledding, the only time anyone whinged at all was with the waiting in line for the lift but even that was minimal. We had not sooner got in the car and driven to the first crossroads when silence reigned in our car, both girls had passed out from their "strenuous" day.

When we got home and fed them their dinner (only half an hour later than normal), they were once again starving and gobbled doen everything we offered then before whinging for more. It must be true what they say about fresh air stimulating the appetite ;0). They also both never made another sound after we laid them down for the night, not until 7am Monday morning!!

The only bad things about the entire day was unfortunately somewhere we lost Ciara's winter jacket. I don't know how as she only had it on in the car, we never took it out of the car at all. And while filming on the hillside we lost the lens cap for our new video camera, again hard to understand as you have to screw it multiple times to take it off and it was firmly screwed on. You probably won't see any video clips as the only times Z filmed me I was having to propel the sled forwards with my feet.