Eli's First Ski Trip!

Two weeks ago we took Eli on his first cross country ski trip! It was our day off and we packed up the whole family (Indy included) and headed for Acadia National Park (one of our favorite places). We were excited to get outside, but to be honest we were a little nervous about this trip. As I've mentioned before, Eli is in a very active stage, and thus we imagined that he might not like staying in the sled very long (much less while he was in his snowsuit). So, we prepared for the possibility that our trip might be just 15 minutes long, and then we just went for it!

While we skied and hiked (Joe had some problems with his ski boots) the kids rode together in our fantastic LL Bean sled and Indy pulled them! Seriously, our dog pulls them (he has a special harness) and it's fantastic! Joe does take over from time to time to give Indy a break. But the kids loved watching Indy pull them and this kept them quite happy for the first 2o minutes or so. And what happened after that? What happened was that Eli fell asleep in the sled sweetly leaning against his sister! And when we turned around near the half way point we even managed to get Lily out of the sled (so she could run around) without waking the sweet little man. We laid him down in the sled, snuggled him in the wool blanket, and our active little boy sweetly slept the rest of the trip (with the dog still pulling him)!

It was honestly one of the sweetest things I have ever seen. And many people who passed us and noticed Eli sleeping in the sled seemed to agree. He didn't wake up until we moved him back into his car seat. Amazing! The only sad part was that I chose to leave my camera at home that day! I just figured that the trip would be sort of crazy and that it would just be too much to handle one more thing. You better believe that I was kicking myself for having missed those moments! So I have no pictures from that trip, but I just can't seem to post without a picture so I thought you might enjoy this one instead! I'm already looking forward to our next trip!