When the kids arrived home from school today, Joy begged me to let them walk down the street to see if the ice on a big pond was thick enough to walk on. The protective, maternal portion of my brain had terrible visions of my children falling through ice into frigid water (and me having to rescue them without any of us perishing in the process), but the rational portion of my brain pointed out that it has been well below freezing for days now, so we should be fine, especially if we stay near the shore.
So down to the pond we went. It was actually hailing a little bit, so it sounded like the contents of a giant salt shaker were constantly pitter-pattering down around us.
First Joy gingerly stepped onto the ice . . .
. . . then Anna ventured out after her. Then they took a little stroll a few yards from shore to retrieve a big rock someone had tossed out onto the ice to see if it was solid. The ice stayed nice and firm the whole time.
Having crossed "walk on an icy pond" off her winter bucket list, Joy decided to see if she could slide down the frozen (man-made) stream that feeds the pond on warmer days. The results of her experiment were underwhelming, to say the least.
Hmm . . . maybe she'll slide better on her tummy? Nope, the coefficient of friction between cotton leggings and a bumpy, nearly-flat sheet of ice is just too high. What's more, Joy's front and back were now very wet and cold. Time to hurry home and have some hot cocoa!
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