I'm the one horse in the open sleigh

In the summer, Eva and I walk to Albertsons with her little red wagon. In the winter, after a good snow, we take a sled. It's always a rugged outdoor adventure, on sidewalks, through icy parking lots, and across an arroyo and a busy street.

On Christmas Eve eve, Isobel, Eva and I took turns pulling the sled across the new foot(ish) of snow to pick up some milk and eggs for Christmas eggnog. Well, they took a couple of quick turns pulling, but they preferred riding in their open sleigh - hey! - singing sleighing songs all night, oh...

They squealed on the downhill sections and got out to help on the steep parts. They hung on tight on the banks and when I'd pull them over the snowbanks on the curbs, Eva would make a very cute, clenched-teeth grimace just before dropping over the precipice.

We ditched our sled in some bushes just outside the store and Eva said, "Someone will take our sled!" and I said, "I hope not."

When we came out of the store, my arms full of milk and Eva's arms full of 18 eggs -- a guy at the door saw all those eggs in her little arms and said, "Wow, you're brave," but he meant something else, probably what you're thinking right now -- we saw a car with a trunk open and a woman dragging OUR SLED toward it. It never would have made it into that car; it wasn't even a hatchback. But she never got a chance to find out; she dropped it on my second hey-that's-our-sled and moseyed into the store without another glance in my direction. Merry Christmas to you too.

So Eva carried the eggs. Then Isobel carried the eggs. Then, after they were rather forcefully tossed there when it was Isobel's turn to ride, the bouncy sled carried the eggs. I guess we got a carton with extra thick shells, because they all made it home. I'm saving one of those for Isobel's 7th grade egg-drop physics experiment. Man, I hope that hard shell holds up.

Anyway, I probably had as much fun sledding to the grocery store as I had sledding for real the next day. So there you go.