Darcy, Articles Editor

I've been having a great time with my pedometer, keeping it on throughout the day just to see how much walking I actually do daily. It was heartening to discover that even when I don't make a point of exercising, I still log on 3 miles or so. But one of the highlights, so far, was when my daughter refused to go to sleep and after my nth trip to her room, I peeked at my pedometer and realized I had done an additional quarter-mile as I went from living room to bedroom. It put a positive spin on the last 30 minutes, and turned my exasperation into exhilaration.

Still, due to weather, I hadn't found a way to add a family walk to our schedule. Then, this weekend, it happened UNEXPECTEDLY. We had a sudden icy, snowstorm on Friday night—a last gasp at winter, I presume—and when we woke up on Saturday we decided to check out the conditions. We bundled the kids up, got out the sled and made the trek (ALMOST a mile) to Central Park. In places the streets had a clear path, in others we had to climb over small snow piles. My husband put our 2-year-old on his shoulders to keep our 20-minute-or-so journey from turning into an hour. She just couldn't resist detouring to touch the snow, but our eight-year-old happily kept up the pace. When we arrived at the park, Cedar Hill—one of the best places for sledding in the city—was packed. Everyone made multiple treks up it—definitely don't need the elliptical when you do that! We built our final snowman before heading home. No one noticed that we had walked nearly 3 miles, we were having too much fun. It was a truly memorable way to say goodbye to winter.