Whitehouse Winterfest!

I haven't written much about this, but wow did we have fun.

I've thought for a long time that Whitehouse should have wacky cardboard sled races. We have one of 5, yep, count 'em, 5 sledding hills in NW Ohio. It's so flat around here you can actually count the hills. Scary, eh? And our hill is the tallest with a steep side and a bunny hill side. Anywho, a couple of months ago, I mentioned this to the Community Development person from the Village. We've done several other events together. She said that she was trying to come up with a winter "thing" in the Village, and voila, Winterfest was born. We brainstormed ideas and came up with the sled races, snowball throwing, snowman and angel making, a 5K, food booths, music, carriage rides, and on and on. Yesterday, we made it happen. (Yeah, baby, Barb and I are a force to be reckoned with.)

When we were choosing a date, I did a little research and found that the coldest two weeks here are the last two of January, but the snowiest are the first two weeks of February. Lo and behold, the Farmers Almanac said we would have a big storm before Valentine's Day and one after. And did we ever. This is very, very unusual for around there, but in town there's 12 inches of snow on the ground. When we thought this up, Barb and I fretted that we wouldn't have any snow. We did have back up plans, but yesterday was quite literally the best weather day we've had this winter. I could go an and on. And on and on. So this post is really a shout out to me. How's that for hubris????



DH took most of these photos, and I put them together with iMovie. Love my Mac. We only had 4 sleds pre-registered, so being afraid that no one else would show, I made one for my great-nephew, Lil Ripper, and one for the Glass City Rollers. But holy cow, some of the thirty that showed up simply rocked the house. We have more great ideas for next year, including a pre-race Sled Show and Judging, and lots more. So y'all come on out!

(Okay, I will tell you which one was my favorite, but I didn't figure it out until today--the Cherry Bombers. They had a "pie pan" for sled, the girls wore red jackets and had red balloons in the sled with them, and on their helmets, they put red covered with criss-crossed masking tape to look like a cherry pie lattice top. Get it? They were a cherry pie! Too creative! Tom's favorite was the Hillside Harley--the 'dashboard' inside was hilarious! And those chickens didn't want to got down the steep side of the hill with the rest of the grown ups. Next year, we'll let grown ups go down the bunny hill, too.)