A highlight of the weekend was having my cousin Chris, his wife Jaqueline, and son Nicolai from Australia come by on Sunday morning for a dogsled ride. Nic, who is 11, has been eating up winter activities, like skiing at Whiteface Mtn, since they arrived here from Sydney last month. His parents say he must have a lot of Canadian in him the way he is handling the cold, which of course he's not used to at all.
He also just loves dogs, so bringing him on a dogsled ride was a blast, and something he can tell his friends about back home. Brennan and Heather showed him the ropes and I think it was neat for them to hang out with people from Australia with cool accents. Nic rode in the basket while Derrick drove the team, and then he let Nic take a turn on the runners part of the way back. Afterwards, Nic even fed the dogs with Derrick like a true musher, and took it upon himself to go go back out and say goodbye and give scratches before they left. At the last minute Derrick thought to give him the musher hat he wore as a memento of his winter adventure. My mom, who had dinner with them all later that evening, reported that he hadn't taken it off. :) We all had a lot of fun!
