SNOW!

This morning the kids woke up to their first snow of the season. The first snow is always magical. Yes, the grass is poking up through, but it's SNOW!!! They have been talking about snow since the pool closed. Being the procrastinator that I am no one has gloves or boots. Little boy almost got out the door without socks or a coat. He does have those. After digging in the closet I came up with three pink hats and mismatched gloves. It wasn't a big deal that the gloves weren't waterproof, After trying for 15 minutes to make one snowball they came in begging for hot chocolate.

All day they made plans for their first snow fort. I didn't have the heart to explain that since we live in the south a snow fort was unlikely at any point this winter.

I grew up in NY. The kids have seen pictures of me on top of mountains of snow. They have seen an army of snowmen my friends and I made during the blizzard of 1993. They know that such things are possible, so they expect them to be possible for them. Sometimes I wish we could visit my family during the winter so they could have that experience too. That would mean I would have to brave the endless construction zone that is Pennsylvania in the winter. That will never happen. NEVER! I could use about 60 exclamation points there. If you've traveled the highways of PA, you understand.

I remember spending hours outside in almost zero degree weather. If it weren't for neighborhood moms bribing us with hot chocolate and changing out our wet snow things we all would have died of exposure. I remember everyone had a huge box of winter outerwear at their house. It didn't really matter if your snow pants were soaked through after an hour. They would dry at heather's house and you would wear her uncles old pair. Then those would be left at Andy's house and you would change into pants that your own brother left there last year.

With these memories swirling in my mind and my children's excitement at the point I feared for my carpet, I had a brilliant idea. Brilliant ideas don't come often for me.

The kids wanted to plan their snow fort, including a whole ream of non recycled paper smuggled from grandma's house as “drawing paper” because she was mortified that the artwork they presented her had memos from their school on the back (they also decorate junk mail and make models of spaceships out of trash). To silence the trees screaming in my head, I pulled out a cookie sheet and 5 trays of ice. We planned our snow fort in 3D (I so rock)! Big boy decided to be more realistic we needed to bring some snow from outside to scatter around the fort. Girlie thought since we had grass in our snow, we should collect some of it to poke out around the fort. Little boy wanted to add some “real outside” to our fort so he stepped out to collect his contribution. He returned while I was in the restroom. There are no pictures of our beautiful fort. He found a fallen tree branch and tried to plant a tree next to the fort. I saw it in slow motion as I returned to the kitchen. Little boy held the totally not to scale “tree” next to the fort and let go. We spent the next twenty minutes searching for melting ice cubes, clumps of grass, and mopping up the kitchen.

The only thing that stopped my hysterical laughing was the realization that there were no ice cubes for my drink.