Sledding weekend with kids

Lynn had a weekend that Jesse was going to be gone so we planned a weekend at the cottage to go sledding.  The kids love sledding up there because the hill is so big and they can "fly" down it.  Well after Grandma packed that trail down last weekend it was frozen and hard like ice...... and fast.  But remember I kept heading for the trees so we had to have spotters at the middle of the hill to stop them from hitting trees and going down the 2nd half of the hill.  Having them walk up the one hill was bad enough we didn't need them walking up from the very bottom with all those clothes on and hauling a sled. 

Melanie wasn't even afraid to go down the hill by herself.  She loved it and wanted to go faster. 

Lynn's turn because this is just way to fun to not go down on the really, really fast sled.

 Does Lynn's tube look a little flat?  It's a snow tube but sledding down a ice hard hill in temperatures in the single digits causes sleds to pop.

Good thing Grandpa and Grandma remembered to bring more sleds up from when the kids were little because Lynn forgot their sleds....... yep a sledding weekend and they forget their sleds.  :)

This hard yellow sled was way to fast to let them use.  One trip down and they almost took out grandpa.  So with the long string on it we hung onto it and let them go till they were out of rope.

That might not have been the best idea...

Lynn did it to Max and he thought it was great.  Grandma did it to Melanie (not on purpose) and she cried hard.  {fail}

Then we would pull them back up the hill........ it was an upper body work out.

 Sometimes we had lots of drama.....

Here Lynn almost lost her.

This sled was great, it was sturdy and fit two of them and with the protective fabric it wasn't quite as fast and we could stop them when we needed to.

When Melanie would go down the hill we had to carry her back up.  That got old fast so we got her to walk to the sled on the rope and then we'd pull her up.  She thought that was fantastic.

Here's all the sledders and for being 8 above zero it really wasn't that cold.  Except when trying to take pictures and you can't wear gloves. 

And of course we had a campfire too.  

Instead of cleaning off the snow on the swing they used it as a cushion.  

 When it was my turn to pull Melanie up I got Max as a helper..... um non-helper.   

After Lynn and Melanie went in we were exploring the bottom of the hill and the river.  I think this is the first year it's been totally frozen.  The big kids were sledding down the bottom hill and I wanted to video it so I ran back up for my camera. 

Here is the video of the kids coming down the hill and out onto the river.

We had such a fun time sledding even in the cold.  The kids are already planning their next trip to the cottage.