It has become our wintertime tradition to take at least one day to go to Flagstaff for a snow play day.  This tradition has become even more important to us now that Mary is old enough to appreciate the snow.  Just the mere mention of snow gets Mary excited.  "I wanna build a 'no-man!" she shouts with glee.  "And I wanna throw 'no-balls at Daddy, too!"

This year, John decided to take the Martin Luther King holiday off with me, so that the three of us could take a drive up to Flagstaff.  Although there had not been any fresh snow in Flagstaff in just under a week - and there wasn't any more snow in the forecast for a least a few more days - we knew that there would be enough snow for us to have a fun morning sledding and throwing "'no-balls" at each other.

We left for Flagstaff around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, January 17, with everything that we would need loaded in the Jeep: the sled, the camera, jackets, gloves, hats, scarves, boots, extra socks...everything except John's gloves and John's sunglasses.  Even though he had reminded himself to grab his skydiving gloves out of his gear bag, he forgot them anyway.

So, upon our arrival in Flagstaff, we made our usual stop at the Wal-Mart, just off of the freeway, to look for gloves and sunglasses for John.  Unfortunately, there had been a rush on gloves recently, which meant that Wal-Mart no longer had any in stock.  Popular didn't have any either.  At that point, John decided that he didn't need them after all; it was going to be fifty degrees in Flagstaff that day anyway.

Around 10:00 a.m., we arrived at the Wing Mountain Snow Play Area, just off of US 180 - this was the place we always came to for our snow-play needs, even though the area was always crowded.  Since it was a holiday, that day was no exception.

We started out by tossing a few hard-packed snowballs - I beaned John with one snowball, so he responded by throwing me to the ground and rubbing snow in my face. 

Then, it was time for some sledding.  At first, John did some solo runs down the larger hills; he was trying to convince Mary to go with him, but she wouldn't do it right away.  It took a few tries, but soon he convinced her to come along on one run.  He found a spot where there weren't a whole lot of sledders and thought that it would be a perfect place to take Mary on her first sled ride of the season.

Of course, that was when he discovered why there weren't any sledders on that particular run...because it was already full of pot holes!  John and Mary hit the first pot hole and went flying out of the sled.  Mary ended up with a couple of surface scratches on her face - no blood - but John took the skin off of his knuckles!  D'oh!

Mary was done sledding after that...at least for a little while.  She decided that she much preferred working on the little snow shelter that someone had started.  John continued sledding by himself, even with his bloody knuckles.  He talked me into doing a few runs, too...and once Mary saw that I was sledding, she wanted back in the action, too.  She even did a run with me!

After a while, Mary wandered off towards one of the smaller hills, on which there were a bunch of younger children sledding with their parents.  She stood and watched them for a while, fascinated by how much fun they were having. 

Then, Mary did something that I did not expect.  Dragging the sled behind her, she climbed to the top of the hill, got into the sled, and glided to the bottom of the hill all by herself!  Neither John nor I could believe that Mary - our cautious child - had actually worked up the courage to sled down the hill on her own.  We were so proud!

At that point, the rest of the morning belonged to Mary.  She must have gone up and down that little hill fifteen times before we finally called it a day.  The whole time, she giggled with glee, for she was having the time of her life.  I'll bet that she never even once noticed that an ambulance had arrived and that paramedics were prepping an injured young woman for transport to the hospital. ("It's all fun till someone gets an eye put out," I said, watching the paramedics wheel the patient on a stretcher towards the awaiting ambulance.)

Just after the paramedics put the stretcher in the ambulance, John announced that it was time to go.  Mary wanted lunch (as did I), and it was already noon.  So, John made a mad dash towards the Jeep, pulling Mary along in the sled behind him.

And wouldn't you know it...Mary had yet another wipe out!  John yanked the sled hard one way, and Mary went flying in the opposite direction!  There were tears, of course, but no blood...and at that point, Mary decided that it was in her best interest to walk the rest of the way to the Jeep.

We thought that we were timing our departure just right.  The ambulance (which was parked right behind our Jeep) had been loaded and was ready to go, so we figured that it would be gone by the time we were done loading up our gear.  But we were wrong; in fact, the ambulance sat there an additional ten minutes before it finally pulled away.  We followed the ambulance out of the parking lot - it was moving ever so slowly along the bumpy, rutted road, so as not to jar the patient.  After a few hundred yards, the ambulance stopped to let people go around.  We zipped past it and got out of its way fast.

Upon arriving back at US 180, we noticed that the Forest Service had temporarily closed the road to incoming traffic - they did that, of course, to allow the ambulance clear passage to the highway.  There were lots of vehicles being turned away and lots of people unhappy that they had to go elsewhere to go play in the snow.

Our day of fun, however, was over.  After stopping for lunch at Chili's in Flagstaff, John and Mary and I headed home to Phoenix...

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