We attended our 2nd annual Spring Carnival at Crotched Mountain today. It was so beautiful outside; almost 70 degrees. We entered Reilly and his friend Owen into the cardboard sled competition. Last year we sent them down in an undecorated bike box that was awaiting it’s trip to the dump. This year, Monica took the project into her own hands. Shad and I got the boxes from EMS, one that we were certain was from @JenSchultis‘s new fancy schmancy mountain bike. Shawn and Monica rallied with the duct tape and the paint. Those items are pretty much what constitute the rules: cardboard, duct tape, paint. That’s it.

When we arrived at Crotched we had to rush to get Reilly up in line for his sled run. I was half carrying Shea in the slush and thankfully Kate was one step ahead of me and wore her rain boots. She was able to slosh around happily in the ankle deep puddles. As Shea’s weight got the best of me, since my camera feels like it weighs as much as she does, I chose to put her down (instead of the camera). She walked next to me with her hand in my hand as I looked up to see if Reilly was in the starting gate. Shea started to complain saying “wet wet”, “Mommy, wet…. wet…” I looked down and said “yes, I am wet too.” It was then that I noticed she was missing a shoe. As I looked back there it was floating in the puddle. It must have come off when she was shin deep in the ice cold water. WHOOPS! Nice job Mom! Someone passing through the puddle tossed it the 25 feet to me and we stuck it on her wet foot. God love her personality because she was fun with the sopping sock and shoe. Ahhhh… yah, another reason I am Mother of the Year.

The boys rode in style in their Old Town boat which was originally conceptualized as a canoe but given the rigid cardboard (again b/c Jen got an awesome bike there was more to protect) Monica opted for a boat. She painted it red and scripted “Old Town” on the side. The boys, equipped with cardboard paddles, pfd’s and helmets took her down the course. They were pretty impressed with their rig until they saw the “big kids” sled also pictured here:

We stayed for the pond skimming competition too. I’ll post a shot or two of that later. There was some GOOD STUFF at that. Crotched did a rockin job with their pond for the skimming. I saw Pat’s Peak’s on the news today and it looked to be about the size of my hallway. (note for those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s pretty small.)

I should make note that on the way to Crotched I got stopped by what my Mom would coin as “a nice face”. It’s her way of saying she had a run in with the law but didn’t get a ticket. Reilly and I got a little nervous when I got pulled over going 41mph in a 30. But hey, the nice face just yelled at me, didn’t write anything down and we got to keep going. Phew.