tobogganing

i'm not a fan of cold weather and i really hate snow. snow when you have kids is even worse than when you don't have them. everything is always wet and cold and it's just miserable.
hayden hasn't gotten to play outside very much this year, or any other year for that matter. it seems like whenever there is enough snow to actually play in, the weather is just too bitter cold to be outside in it. the big snowfall the other day was perfect as it was nice and sunny and warm. it still was a pain having his mittens fall off every other minute, but at least i wasn't out there freezing as well.
so i've been telling hayden that we'll have to take him tobogganing this year. mostly because i knew that the toboggan hill is much less snowy than a sledding hill. we wouldn't have to deal with climbing up a big snow covered hill while carrying a sled AND hayden. we wouldn't have to get all wet and super cold. we really wouldn't have to touch snow at all.
i had planned to take him this past sunday as they will be closing the hill down for the season by next weekend, as long as the weather is still ok. the last thing i wanted was to wait until the very last minute and have it be 60 degrees and them close the hill before we had a chance to go.
thursday morning i woke up with a sore throat. i had hoped it wouldn't turn into anything other than that as we had plans friday nite, saturday nite and then the tobogganing on sunday. by thursday nite i had the chills, aches and a fever. i felt pretty miserable on friday and had to cancel all of our plans. i had decided that no matter what, we would still be taking hayden tobogganing on sunday. i would be able to pull it off, even for just a little bit.
saturday i actually started feeling better but i had already cancelled my plans for the evening. my fever and most of my aches were gone. i now mostly had a really bad cold with a horrible cough. our friends bobby and david were looking for something to do and suddenly our sunday plans for tobogganing turned into last minute plans for saturday evening.
we got ourselves ready and took talan over to grandma and grandpa's and then headed over to bobby's so we could all take off from there. aside from dave, me and hayden, bobby, mallory, brianna, brianna's friend, and david all went. we didn't leave his house until a little after 6pm and didn't get to waterford oaks until a little after 7. it was pretty cool to actually go in the dark though. and there really weren't many people there so there was no line to wait in for the hill.
i wondered how hayden was going to take the first ride as the hill is really big. he took to it like a champ and after silently flying down the first ride with dave and myself, with me wondering if he was ok the whole time, we got off and hayden excitedly said "that was AWESOME!!! let's go again!"
and that was that.
eventually, hayden was riding in the front spot on the toboggan with the 2 other kids. the entire nite he had the biggest smile on his face. he just lives for this stuff.
we probably ended up going about 10 times. about half of the way through, bobby was helping to push one of the toboggans to give them a head start. he basically pushed with his whole body, but as soon as the toboggan took off from the start the little (or not so little) stopper thing popped up and nailed bobby in the shin. it was a pretty bad injury that took him out of the game for the rest of the evening. about an hour later it was HUGE. hopefully that toboggan at least won the race!
we told hayden we were going one more time and just as i expected, when we finished up the ride he immediately started crying that he wanted "just one more time!!!" but it was late, nobody had eaten dinner and he was exhausted from a long day. he fell asleep within minutes as soon as we got into the car.
we had a great time and will probably end up going more than once next year! maybe even with talan! i guess the cold weather is good for something. of course i'd happily give it all up to live on a beach for the rest of my life.

this was his face for pretty much the entire evening:
dave and bobby. coming to get ya:
mallory, brianna's friend and brianna:
us:
we really were cold:
waiting for the next run:
rolling down a hill:
hayden and dave:
hayden is in the front. click on it to see it a bit better:
mallory and bobby showing off his injury:
hot chocolate and red cheeks: