If the Shoe Fits...

These bitter Minnesota days are making our first outdoor family outings feel like they were an eternity ago!  It has been one of our 2013 resolutions to be more active as a family and by and large it has succeeded.  With winter approaching Bri & I decided we needed to find something we could do as a family to continue that momentum, however, neither of us is terribly fond of most winter sports or winter in general to be honest (it's weird how many Midwesterners say that but still continue to live here year after year...).  So, it was decided that snowshoeing may be up our alley.  After all, we have some really great city, county, and state parks around the area and we love hiking.

Well, Brian finally put his pawn store obsession to good use and found us all nice sets of snowshoes for real cheap.  The girls have the most adorable LL Bean snow shoes that they received for Christmas.  They were pretty excited and sad to have to wait for a day warm enough to safely try them out.  But we finally had that day this weekend.  So we strapped on our shoes and headed out to our local county park/nature preserve and gave it a shot.  It was really quite fun and they have several trails set up specifically for snowshoeing.  Addi will never be described as graceful and fell about a half dozen times before we had even been at it 15 minutes.  She kept a good attitude about it and we all had a giggle (or two) at her expense.

All in all it was much more successful than our Christmas day sledding adventure.  The girls were also gifted two plastic sleds that cost us a small fortune (boo to you Target!); the first one cracked after just sitting on it in the living room.  Lucky for us, my SIL had an extra sled (identical and only 1/5 the cost from Menards) that she lent us.  We bundled up and took the girls to our local sledding hill. The first two runs were tons of fun, papa & Addi vs. mama & Lili.  Brian wanted some pictures so the girls and I crowded onto Lili's new sled and boy, did he get some pictures!

Sasquatch walk up the hill

Piling on...

Here we go!

Hit a bump....  Look at the air we got, though!

And were down...

Kids are slightly dazed...

Hey, what's going on?

"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Note the scream on Lili's face as she cried in pain and devastation.  It was not pleasant.  We crowded the girls back in the van and set off for home to monitor Lili for a possible trip to the ER as the sled had come down on her foot.  Luckily, it was mostly sorrow that was the reason for her tears.