"It's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together..."

What a great weekend! This winter has been so breathtakingly cold that we haven't spent very much time outside, but this weekend the temperatures ping-ponged between -10°C and 0°C. We bundled ourselves off to the park for sledding, snowball fights, and skating—Malcolm's first time! He sort of shuffled along on his double-blades, occasionally leaning back to be pushed along.

Poor Maren... the latch on her skates kept coming completely undone. It's hard enough to keep balance on a single blade when your ankles are well-supported! She was the picture of dogged determination, though, and kept going until she was tired out.



The second outing, on Sunday, also included a free sleigh ride and a few doses of hot chocolate. We were glad we had done skating the day before... the warmly welcomed sunshine had a slush-creating effect on the ice surface. By late afternoon, not one of the few hundred people on the pond was still wearing skates.

And what's a family outing without a family picture? You can see a look of concentration on Maren's face in the first picture...

...and the effect of her concentration in the second. She informed us that she would throw snow every time, so we contented ourselves with one un-snowy photo.