Hey Dads! Have you been sledding with the kids yet this year? You know the activity I’m talking about. When the kids ride toboggans down the hill and you pull them back up? Sometime the sleds. Sometimes the sleds and the kids!
A couple years ago we moved out west to our “home, home on the range where the deer and the antelope play.” You read that right. The deer and the antelope play. The deer and the antelope do not sled. Because “the range” is pretty flat. It’s so flat that it’s actually called “The Great Plains”! An accurate name.
With all this talk about flatness and lack of hills we were surprised to get a text from some friends the other day asking us if we wanted to go sledding with them. I wondered where we could partake of such an activity. But they’re locals who have lived in the prairies their whole lives so if anyone would know where the hidden hills were it was them. We accepted the invitation.
When we lived in Ontario we had sleds. So many sleds. Round plastic sleds, long wood toboggans, ancient black G.T. Snowracers from when I was a kid. There were hills around. We could literally see ski hills from our kitchen window. But when we decided to move to Saskatchewan the sleds were cut from the moving list. No room in the trailer for sleds. Lucky for me, there was tons of room in the trailer for other very important things like my tool box and ancient red drum set from when I was a kid.
We started to pack up for the sledding adventure. “Kids, where’s all the sleds?” I asked, mostly to myself. Fortunately, we had a picked up a few at the thrift store last winter and they were now scattered around the yard. But, boy, they don’t make sleds like they used to! Most of these were flappy, floppy, foam circles and rectangles in various states of disrepair because of a puppy who must have enjoyed the taste of foam. It crossed my mind to throw them in the dumpster rather than bring them to the alleged prairie hill. But they were all we had so we loaded 5 sleds and 12 people into the van and headed for the hill. The math on those numbers dictated that some sharing would be necessary.
To make the sled sharing easier we made a couple stops on the way. One stop at the cousins’ house to borrow a couple snow sliders and one at Canadian Tire to buy an over-priced piece of foam with some plastic on the bottom. I hoped it would make it down the hill without being destroyed.
Finally, we arrived at the hill! Friends and family, young and old began to fly down the hill on all manner of pliable plastic pieces! Dads made some slides down the hill and many trips back up the hill with one, two, or three sleds and children in hand. I remembered our sledding adventure when I woke up this morning and could feel the various parts of my spine working to realign themselves. Dig those sleds out of the garage and hit the hills with your kids to make some memories, dad! Time flies. Make every moment count. Even the slippery-walking-uphill ones!
Jason Weening pulls his 10 kids and one patient wife on sleds (Not all at the same time). Get his book on Amazon, “Yes, Dear…I’m Watching Them”.