Good sports

It was a sports filled weekend at our house this past weekend. On Saturday, we went downtown to the Oncenter for the New York Special Olympics Winter Games. I was registered as a volunteer, and Aidan and James went along to be spectators. There were so many volunteers that my assigned job was to also be a spectator! We watched some figure skating and speed skating, but especially enjoyed the floor hockey matches. You can read more about the event over at syracuse.com.

We went over to Empire Brewing Co. in Armory Square for a late lunch. Although our waitress was quite enthusiastic about a beer brewed from/with Concord grapes, we were not not that thrilled with the samples. James chose the India Pale Ale, I chose the Downtown Brown - yum! - and Aidan went with milk, neat. The burgers were quite tasty, too.

On Sunday, we went to our new favorite park, Beaver Lake Nature Center, for a snowshoe hike. Since there was so little snow on the ground, we were outfitted with different snowshoes than we had used on our first hike.

Note: Did you pay attention to what I just wrote? "Since there was so little snow on the ground..." Yes, you read it correctly! There really isn't that much snow on the ground here in the greater Syracuse area, compared to usual and certainly not compared with, say, Washington DC!

Anyway, back to my story. The snowshoes we used on Sunday were smaller and had teeth on the bottom to grip the hard, packed snow. Aidan managed much better with these snowshoes, and took off running:


Of course, it wasn't long before he needed a rest:


James stayed warm with the new hat that I knit for him:


We snowshoed for 2.3 miles, then walked for another half mile. By then, we had more than earned all the junk food we ate later while watching the Super Bowl!