Snow Day!

I can so clearly remember being a little kid and waking up in the morning and looking out the window of our little house to see winter's first snow fall. It was so surprising, breath-taking and exciting! All of that peaceful snow opened up a world of possibility for my brother and I...for our day's agenda. Tobogganing, building snow forts, making snow angels, having snowball fights with the neighbour kids...so much fun! I can still hear the distinct echo of our noise and laughter...so loud against the quiet of the snow.

My all time favourite though, is bundling up really warm and playing outside in the snow at night when it is pitch dark outside. The whole world is like a different place. Especially when the snowflakes are dropping and you can tip back your head and catch them so easily because they are so visible against the vast dark sky. Living up north, that first snowfall was always so special. The novelty of the snow would slowly wear off throughout the winter and then as the snowbanks turned brown and the roads turned to muddy slush we would just wait for the spring rain to come and melt away the ice and snow. But that first snowfall was magical.

When we moved down to the coast, our first Christmas without snow was almost surreal. I didn't understand why people even bothered putting up Christmas lights without the snow to reflect the lights. Everything looked so different - like one key ingredient was missing. We were happy to be near all of our extended family though, and Christmas proved to be lovely even without the snow.

Now, nineteen years later and I must admit that I still crave snow in December. Purely for its picturesque quality. The way it traps people in their cozy homes and provides an excellent excuse for having a lazy day with family. When it happens to fall any day from December 24-31st then snow just seems to have such a peaceful quality to it. It says, relax and enjoy. So that is what we did today.

This is the type of snow that doesn't wait around. By the afternoon it can be melted away. So we had breakfast and then donned our winter gear right over our pj's and headed for the tobogganing hill. We were among the first on the hill and the snow was powdery as our toboggan slid down the slope.

After a few runs down the hill and carrying both kids and the sled back up the hill several times RKA and I realized that we were way more into it than the kids.

Next time it snows we might need to get a babysitter so that we can go tobagganing! So after a few rides down rocket run we followed R and B over to the playground. They thought it was super fun to slide down the snow covered slides and swing through the cool crisp air.