What Was I Thinking?

okay. so i had this great idea: the snow had been baking in the sun for the past 2 weeks since i last gathered wood, i figured it would be hardpacked enough to support a 145 pound hominid straddling an atv for the purpose of gathering wood. i fire her up, reverse her down the hill (reversed so if i begin to sink, i can blast it forward before i sink even more), and butt-forward myself to the woodpiles. exactly halfway down the backyard i sink in snow such that the bottom of the motormounts are sitting on top of the snow. okay, so forward here i go...nothing, just digging myself deeper and deeper. my last strategy was pushing while walking next to it and gunning the throttle (it worked last time!). instead i'm pushing, next to the atv, gunning the throttle while the atv's sinking like a hot piece of coal even deeper in the snow. if there were a video camera filming me it'd be a hillbilly vignette of what not to do with an atv in deep snow. it's stuck and i'm getting frustrated because it'll be a while--like spring--until i can get it out. can't pull it out with my truck because the atv's so far down the hill that the truck'll get stuck, don't have a winch on the atv so i really have no other option than to gather my five and seven year-old daughters to give it a real team effort.
so here we are, it's 6:00 at night during winter (23 degrees fahrenheit), and all three of us are trudging down the hill, my girls probably thinking: what the hell's daddy getting us into now?. i put my beautiful five year-old in front to weigh down the front wheels and my seven year-old's piloting the beast. all the while i'm pushing the rear of the atv and inhaling precious carbon monoxide and all sorts of sulfates and nox-everything a growing boy needs! i put her in 4wd low and maricel's gunning it while maura's doing the hillbilly pistonic, up and down oompa band dance movements up front. i'm busting an aneurism pushing in deep snow with everything i have-butt and back to the rear, hands as bumpers pushing the rear of the atv. one hour later, including some fancy snow shovelling work from yours truly we're out. it's quite a cathartic finish slowly heading out of the decline towards the house. it seems like it's in slow motion. i look up as i'm pushing and here's what i'm witnessing: maricel's hunched over the controls steering and thumb throttling like ayrton senna and maura's up front like a viking riding point on the ship soaking up the wind...just a little bit more...a little bit more...we're out!!!!!
teamwork baby!!!! that's what i'm talking about!!!!! yup. my girls are righteous. not only did we get the atv unstuck; but, even in the twenty degree weather, the girls never, ever complained. they were just attentive to directions and willing to work (although i had to really yell when maricel had the throttle wide open). when we got inside the house they were freezing and i was sweating. time to start the fire for my little badasses...
ps. the pictures were taken this morning, after the fact.