Skating and Sledding at Baxter's

January 26, 2008

Samantha was very excited to try skating this year. She already amused passers-by at Canadian Tire back in December with her squeals of delight as she tried on some skates. But alas, poppa doesn't work *that* hard and we didn't have enough money to get the skates. Santa however stepped to the rescue and brought Samantha not only skates for Christmas, but also a cool hockey helmet too! The only thing he forgot was to bring Sammy some ice so we put in a late request and Santa finally delivered.

Today we went to Baxter's Conservation Area for Sammy's first official skate. We had the whole pond to ourselves. The tractor had cleared it the previous day but a new snowfall blanketed the ice. We decided to give it a try anyway and it worked out since our tracks in the snow were interesting and gave us a clear measure of DTSLF (distance travelled since last fall). And Samantha did quite well. We had a few instances of "boom, a terre" (hmmm, grandma, where did she get that expression from?!) but Samantha got back up and had a great time. And every time she crossed the ice, her reward was to do "fancy stuff" with poppa.

Eventually the call of "jaguar mountain" was too enticing and Sammy traded in the skates for the sled, although she kept the helmet on for a while still. So baby jaguar (aka Samantha) headed up the mountain and had fun sledding, calling to us on occasion "Ayudarme!" which momma quickly recognized as "help!" in Spanish. (Is anyone noticing the influence of the TV show "Go Diego Go" here...?) Eventually Christopher woke from his nap and while poppa pushed him in the stroller a bit, Sammy and momma rescued four maned wolves before calling it quits. Sammy actually wanted to go back and skate some more but momma convinced her that we needed to get the baby wolves home and that we'd go back skating tomorrow. :)

A quick helmet fitting and hockey tryout at home before heading out.