Winter croquet

It's been goshawful cold this past week, but just before the current cold spell set in -- and after things had dried out from several days of rain -- we were able to break out the croquet set the girls got for Christmas.

I tried to set up the stakes and wickets at the distance noted on our rules sheet, but our back yard wasn't quite wide enough.  It was only short by a few feet, really. However, I think next time I can make it appreciably smaller just to make things a little less demanding on small-framed croquet beginners. It took quite a lot of poorly aimed whacking to get the balls around the whole circuit.  The unanimous verdict, however, was "Fun!"