Merry Christmas, everybody!
Ever since we got the cabin, we have been daydreaming about coming up here for Christmas. Last year we flew to Ohio instead, though we did get to come here for New Years. But getting here last night was truly an adventure. In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. But who ever sees problems coming?
See, we get up to the cabin by snowmobile. Snowmobiles are very good at going across hard, icy snow. They sink in powder or slush, and they weigh 800 pounds or so. That makes picking them up and out of their obstacle hard.
And earlier this week, we got a foot of snow in the valley. That's about 3 feet up here.
Then, the day we came up, it warmed up and rained. It was still pouring rain when we got up here.
That makes 3 feet of fresh, slushy snow, if you are counting.
First the truck got stuck. We took the snowmobiles off the trailer and drove them up past the parking lot, then walked back down. Then the empty trailer got stuck, so we took it off and left it by the side of the road. Finally got the truck to the parking lot. Then we loaded the kids and all our food and clothes in the snowmobiles and headed up. Both snowmobiles got stuck about 15 feet from each other, 1/3 mile away from the cabin. We sat the kids on mine, got his unstuck, and then he took off. I thought we were going to switch the kids over to his and get mine out, and he thought he would just run the sled of stuff up to the cabin and come back to help.
Well, he got stuck at the cabin and couldn't get out when he turned around.
When I realized he wasn't coming back, I knew I couldn't manuver the stuck snowmobile with both kids. That meant we had to walk. A third a mile, in 3 feet of snow, up the hill. (I sound like an old geezer.) The part that upset me the most is that their snow boots were at the cabin, and daddy had driven off with their gloves. They had hats and thick coats with hoods, but they were wearing their fake cowboy boots and jeans.
I gained a new appreciation for pioneers last night. Or anyone in the vast history of the world before motorized vehicles. Carrying and pulling those poor kids up the hill and knowing their fingers were bare made me cry more than once. But we only had under a mile to go. And there was a dry and relatively warm cabin at the end of the road. With dry clothes to change into, and tons of firewood to make a fire. How many of them could say that?
I tell you, though, Tyler is the trooper of the universe. I have always said that he wouldn't complain if you locked him in a room with no objects or windows or anything for an hour, and I think last night was worse. I mean, the kids sank up to their knees with almost every step. And while I could carry Kaitlyn some of the time, I just didn't have the strength to carry Tyler. Tyler cried exactly once, when he fell down more than halfway up. It made me cry, too, that things had finally gotten to him (Kaitlyn had been beside herself most of the time, poor dear). But then he stopped a minute later, and when I asked if he could keep walking he said "yeah." So onward we trudged. Kaitlyn made a valiant effort to keep going and sing Christmas songs with me, but who on earth wouldn't complain about that trip? Only Tyler.
So I guess that's what I gained this Christmas. Perspective. Thankfully, we did make it up, and since it was warm enough, no one got frostbite or anything. That was a wonderful blessing. The kids were happy and watching a movie within an hour, so all's well.
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