Sleigh Ride

Our neighbor, Rien Crane, lives on the border of the big Maxfield ranch that stretches from our house all the way to Lyman.  The Cranes are a wonderful family and they have horses and pigs and chickens and all kinds of ranch animals.  He has a matched set of beautiful big Clydesdale horses that he offered to hitch up for us and take us on a sleigh ride (He doesn't actually have a sleigh, he just hooks them up to a flatbed trailer and puts some bales of hay on it for benches. But it works out well because he can fit a lot more passengers on the sleigh ride that way than he could if it were an actual sleigh). 

Rob thought that all our city-dwelling family would love a country sleigh ride in December, so we scheduled the Christmas Sleigh Ride for the afternoon of Hallie's baptism day.  That meant that all the Hendersons got to go in the first batch and then all the Merkleys went together in the second batch.  Rob went with the Henderson sleigh ride and I went with the Merkley sleigh ride, so I'm sure you can guess which sleigh ride had pictures! ;)

We played a little in the snow while we waited for the first group to finish:

 Then it was finally our turn! Sleigh ride time!

Loading up

Meeting the Clydesdales--they are so awesome!

He also towed a few inner tubes behind the sleigh for anyone who wanted a tube ride

Matt, Evie, and Chris/Jake

Oh what fun it is to sing a sleighing song tonight!

Jess took a turn driving the horses

Tim, Claire, and Hallie took a turn on the inner tubes

Lacey driving

Rob and Matt

Cute cousins!

They started getting a bit cold by the end, especially little Kallie.

What a fun ride! It was great to go together! After the sleigh ride, a bunch of us went sledding too--first some mini sledding on the very gentle rise in our neighbor's yard, and then Xtreme Sledding down a very steep hill off the plateau a block behind our house--crazy!

Sledding with Toddlers:

Jake and Brooklyn

Grandfather and Brookie

Matt and Rachel

Mike and Hallie

...and Sledding with Adrenaline Junkies:

Mike

I love this one of Jess

Yes, that is Hallie.  I had no idea they were taking her on that huge, steep, long hill! They just said they were going out to find a good hill.  But she loved it!

It's hard to capture the scope of this hill in a photo, but this is the best one.  Look at the size of my dad, the furthest one to the right, and then look at the size of Matt, the furthest to the left.  Matt is at the bottom of the hill, my dad is about halfway down. 

Chris

Later that day, Matt and Jess went out to the trampoline to clear off the snow--and discovered there was actually a huge sheet of ice buried beneath all the snow! With a good deal of maneuvering, they finally got it out!

SNOW DAY!! We had a ball together!