And everything is right with the world
It’s snowing. Anybody that knows anything about me knows how much I love the snow. We are expecting up to 5 inches today with up to 8 possible by tomorrow morning – a VERY big deal when we can go years and years and years without seeing snow. I bet I’ve walked 30 miles this morning just going to the front door to stand at the edge of the porch with my face to the sky while snow whispers all around me. It makes everything good.
The kids are bundling up for the second trip of the morning out into the great white wilderness (the one inch of snow in the back yard). Nothing makes them as excited as snow does. They’re only good for about 15 or 20 minutes though. It’s cold out there. Doug, as usual, has gone to work. That’s the yankee in him. “Snow? This isn’t snow!” says he. Hmph, 15 years he’s lived here, you’d think he’d know by know that snow shuts everything down and causes countywide shortages of milk, bread and toilet paper. It’s a rare enough event that I think we should stay home, drink hot chocolate and sew. For some reason when it snows I get the urge to sew. I may set the kids to cutting out quilt squares later. We’ll call it math so Jake’s school day isn’t completely lost. Lucky thing we’ve been working on measurement anyway. We may even bake something later and throw in some fractions while we’re at it. It’s futile to attempt a full day of school with him when his sisters are out of school. What is snow? Where does it come from? Why doesn’t it snow here as often as it does in other places? Hey, I think we can cover science and social studies too. Make him speak in complete sentences and we’ve got the whole lot of subject areas under control.
The kids have made it a record amount of time outside so far - 35 minutes and they’re still going. I’ve bumped up the thermostat and set up a little space heater in the kitchen so they have a good place to warm up when they make it back inside. Luna (the min pin) is sitting on my lap, wrapped in the edges of my robe (yep, I’m still not dressed) trying to get warm enough to stop shivering. 5-pound puppies aren’t made to withstand extreme weather. Jake just came running in for a quick potty break. Judging from the number of irritated grunts and groans, I’d say he’s just discovered how hard it is to pee when your hands are frozen stiff and you’re wearing layers upon layers of wet clothing.
I think for school today we will settle for just making a memory. I think maybe kids today don't get enough of those. I remember clearly every single time I’ve seen snow in my life. Once, when I was probably about 10 years old, we were at my grandparent’s house. I think the roads must have been good because all of my aunts and uncles and cousins were there too. We built snowmen that were like, 12 feet tall. The cousins (all boys), my brother and I would start a little snowball and roll it until it became this huge roll thing that took all 4 of us and our Uncle Tony to push. Our little gloved hands were stuffed into Army issue wool socks and we had loaf bread bags wrapped around them to keep dry Rubberbands held them around our wrists. Same thing with our feet – bread bags make awesome snow skis. Like I said, we don’t tend to require a lot of heavy-duty winter clothing. Cloth gloves and any old boot will usually suffice around here, but snow requires getting inventive. Once our snowman had a nice large hay-bale sized bottom, we started piling smaller snowballs on top of that until one of us would have to climb on Tony’s shoulders to add the small, round snowman head. When we tired of making snowmen, we’d walk in the pasture and jump into drifts of snow, trying to guess if they might have horse or cow poop under them or not. Frozen cow poop poses no threat to a sunbeam bread bag. It was a long time ago and we had no such thing as cable television, gameboys and playstations or even VCR’s to watch movies on. We had three channels and they depended heavily on clear skies for the signal. Entertainment was thin. Ahhh, the good old days…back when broken tree branches became forts and horse poop and hickory nuts were the weapons of choice. My kids have no idea what they’re missing. We didn’t know how good we had it. Such is the way, I guess. Maybe today can remedy some of that.
It’s snowing. Anybody that knows anything about me knows how much I love the snow. We are expecting up to 5 inches today with up to 8 possible by tomorrow morning – a VERY big deal when we can go years and years and years without seeing snow. I bet I’ve walked 30 miles this morning just going to the front door to stand at the edge of the porch with my face to the sky while snow whispers all around me. It makes everything good.
The kids are bundling up for the second trip of the morning out into the great white wilderness (the one inch of snow in the back yard). Nothing makes them as excited as snow does. They’re only good for about 15 or 20 minutes though. It’s cold out there. Doug, as usual, has gone to work. That’s the yankee in him. “Snow? This isn’t snow!” says he. Hmph, 15 years he’s lived here, you’d think he’d know by know that snow shuts everything down and causes countywide shortages of milk, bread and toilet paper. It’s a rare enough event that I think we should stay home, drink hot chocolate and sew. For some reason when it snows I get the urge to sew. I may set the kids to cutting out quilt squares later. We’ll call it math so Jake’s school day isn’t completely lost. Lucky thing we’ve been working on measurement anyway. We may even bake something later and throw in some fractions while we’re at it. It’s futile to attempt a full day of school with him when his sisters are out of school. What is snow? Where does it come from? Why doesn’t it snow here as often as it does in other places? Hey, I think we can cover science and social studies too. Make him speak in complete sentences and we’ve got the whole lot of subject areas under control.
The kids have made it a record amount of time outside so far - 35 minutes and they’re still going. I’ve bumped up the thermostat and set up a little space heater in the kitchen so they have a good place to warm up when they make it back inside. Luna (the min pin) is sitting on my lap, wrapped in the edges of my robe (yep, I’m still not dressed) trying to get warm enough to stop shivering. 5-pound puppies aren’t made to withstand extreme weather. Jake just came running in for a quick potty break. Judging from the number of irritated grunts and groans, I’d say he’s just discovered how hard it is to pee when your hands are frozen stiff and you’re wearing layers upon layers of wet clothing.
I think for school today we will settle for just making a memory. I think maybe kids today don't get enough of those. I remember clearly every single time I’ve seen snow in my life. Once, when I was probably about 10 years old, we were at my grandparent’s house. I think the roads must have been good because all of my aunts and uncles and cousins were there too. We built snowmen that were like, 12 feet tall. The cousins (all boys), my brother and I would start a little snowball and roll it until it became this huge roll thing that took all 4 of us and our Uncle Tony to push. Our little gloved hands were stuffed into Army issue wool socks and we had loaf bread bags wrapped around them to keep dry Rubberbands held them around our wrists. Same thing with our feet – bread bags make awesome snow skis. Like I said, we don’t tend to require a lot of heavy-duty winter clothing. Cloth gloves and any old boot will usually suffice around here, but snow requires getting inventive. Once our snowman had a nice large hay-bale sized bottom, we started piling smaller snowballs on top of that until one of us would have to climb on Tony’s shoulders to add the small, round snowman head. When we tired of making snowmen, we’d walk in the pasture and jump into drifts of snow, trying to guess if they might have horse or cow poop under them or not. Frozen cow poop poses no threat to a sunbeam bread bag. It was a long time ago and we had no such thing as cable television, gameboys and playstations or even VCR’s to watch movies on. We had three channels and they depended heavily on clear skies for the signal. Entertainment was thin. Ahhh, the good old days…back when broken tree branches became forts and horse poop and hickory nuts were the weapons of choice. My kids have no idea what they’re missing. We didn’t know how good we had it. Such is the way, I guess. Maybe today can remedy some of that.
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