We live in the South: two things we do not have but would have come in handy this week:

1. Snow shovel
2. Sled

The former is easily enough fixed. A good square-point shovel gets the job done, albeit very slowly. The latter took some thinking. Eventually, we settled on a design: enormous Zip-Lock bags encasing a few carefully folded blankets. It’s soft; it’s durable; it slides — almost.

It needs a little motivation to go the first few times — a little momentum from an old body that now cringes looking at this picture. Still, for the good of God, country, sledding, and all that.

K has a bit more success, but Baby, strapped to a paper plate, glides along the frozen snow like a pro.

L herself, though, is a little more reluctant. She needs a few more observational sessions to get comfortable with the idea of sliding down ice on a pile of blankets tucked in a bag. (Would a proper sled allay her fears any?)

In the end, the most fun for L is “cleaning” the streets: taking large chunks of frozen snow she finds and breaking them gleefully.

“I’m helping our neighbors,” she explains in utmost seriousness, dumping another load of snow back into the road as she talks. “It’s hard work.” And wet.

So is hauling a heavy chunk of growing girl up and down the icy streets on an improvised sleigh, but like L, K doesn’t complain.

Hard is sometimes a pleasure.