A Toddler and an Icy Cold Lake

In January, our family headed to our favorite sledding spot at beautiful Lake Wenatchee.
It has a great sledding hill for the kids, and you can get great pictures of your family right on the shores of the freezing cold lake.

{Or, if you're Natalie, IN the freezing cold lake. . . }

I was excited for Natalie to experience sledding for the very first time, since she was a baby when we went sledding last year. So we bundled everyone up in layers, got out of the car, and Kirsten and Natalie got pulled around in the sled by Uncle Chance, on the flat snow by the lake.

They loved it!

Time for pictures by the lake!
I snapped a few photos of Kirsten trying to make a snow angel. . .

And then I turned around and saw this:

{Yes, that picture was taken in mid-RUN. She was not standing by the water, she was running into it!}

And I was silly enough to think, "She'll stop. She'll stop. . . right?"

Natalie did NOT stop. She made a beeline straight into that icy cold lake. She ran in a few steps, then tripped and flopped face-forward into the water. She just floated there for a couple of seconds until I grabbed her with one hand by the hood of her coat and hauled her out of there. And her face looked like this:

That's right. This child was laughing, and pointed to the water and wanted to go back in! Watch out, an insane almost-2-year-old on the loose!

So we got our rushed family shots. . .

{Aww, I like this one! Brooke was so tiny!}

And then we got Natalie back to the car, where we dried her off and changed all her clothes. I had brought extra clothes for the kids with me, but not extra boots or socks and of course those were the most soaked. (And I thought I was so prepared too!) So naughty Natalie had to stay in the car and didn't get to go sledding down the hill after all.

{Kirsten and Chance sledding down the hill. Kirsten had a blast!}

And that is definitely a story I will tell to Natalie's boyfriends someday. . . and then to her children. We will certainly never forget the day she decided to go swimming in the ice cold Lake Wenatchee.