Christmas Day Sledding

If we are lucky enough to be blessed with a white Christmas, it has been a family tradition to go sledding with the Batalden crew on Christmas Day. Parker considers it part of his birthday celebration, and we all look forward to the promise of several 30 second adrenaline rushes to warm the blood. This year we took our loyal family companions...aka River Girl and Lemhi. John, being his fun-loving and adventurous self, loaded both dogs onto his sled. After one giant push by yours truly, dogs and man sped down the mountain. How they all managed to stay in the sled is a small Christmas miracle. Parker newly turned 11, can afford to be the risk-taker in the family. No jump was too intimidating for this kid. He must of went up and down the sled hill at least 50 times. Stenersen and Batalden children all set records of who could jump their sled the highest and farthest. The dads stand in the middle of the hill building up the snow jump (I referred to it as the "pee my pants" jump).Parker won this year with Gunnar coming in at 2nd. Gunnar was a like a tiger eating a steak. He tore up the mountain and his face after a hefty crash. The two older Batalden boys rode the sled several times, but their specialty was going over the jump with their snow boards. Justin and Jordan can call themselves brave or insane. It was painful to watch them crash, crash and crash again. I think of all the attempts, only one managed to land on his back side and not his head! Gaby, observing the crazy boys, hung out at the top of the hill with the moms. However, the girls did surrender to peer pressure in order to win the record for putting all three of us in the sled, taking on the jump "pee my pants" and remaining in the sled after the launch.
Once again, our Christmas sledding was filled with screams, crashes, wet pants, laughs, hot coffee and dripping noses.