Snow News is Good News

There are a lot of reasons a person's picture might end up in the newspaper. Somewhere near the middle of a continuum that includes an orange jumpsuit wearing perp walk at one end and being given the key to the city by the mayor while your cape billows in the wind at the other, is having your face immortalized in a spray of snow as you plummet downhill on a sled.

Our friends from Camrose were up for the weekend with their young boys, and the combination of bright sun, no wind, and fresh snow made the allure of the sledding hill at Government House Park irresistible.

I thought it would be busy since we didn't get there until just before noon, but there were no other cars in the parking lot, and only a handful of other people, most of whom busied themselves on the steeper hill at the foot of the Royal Alberta Museum.

Government House has been my favourite place for sledding for years now, but I have never seen it looking as beautiful as it did today.  Bright and clear, with patches of ice still scudding down the unfrozen North Saskatchewan, and tree branches piled with snow in a way that made them look as artificial as a ceramic Christmas village.

We hadn't been sledding long when a man with no toboggan, nor tube nor krazy karpet, but with a large bag and a laminate made his way to the foot of the smaller hill we were using, and asked if he could take some pictures for the Edmonton Sun.  "You don't have to do anything except ignore me," he joshed, so we agreed.

Going downhill face first, as I am inclined to do, means that any fresh snow I encounter is likely to be worn or ingested, and hearing the autowinder (or whatever you'd call  it on a digital camera) clicking away as I slowly drew to a halt made it pretty likely that my facefull was captured in some fashion.  Picking myself up, I heard him chuckle, "The beard full of snow really makes that picture."

"Old Man Winter, Middle-Aged Guy Winter; not a lot of difference," I replied.

When he was finished, he asked for our names, and said if any of them were picked, they would be in tomorrow's paper, and even if they weren't, they might make it to the website.  Surfing on the iPad after supper, I swung by their site and saw Glory's picture as the link to a slideshow entitled 'Winter in Edmonton.'

I wasn't surprised to see her there; she brings a lot of charm and joie de vivre to the table, and I think this picture conveys that pretty well.  What does surprise me is that of all the people sledding, including my darling daughters, charming wife, and my godson and his brother, mine is the picture they chose to use?

Must be the hat.

UPDATE:  The paper edition of today's Sun had yet another picture that someone from church was nice enough to clip for us:

I can't get over how much younger Glory looks in these!