Snow Days

My childhood memories are speckled with the magic of waking up in the morning to the first snowfall, and the thrill of sledding down my own driveway, and the sheer elation that of school closing due to a snow day! These are memories that are completely void in my daughter's (and husbands) childhood. We live in a climate that just doesn't see snow and even though as an adult I am so happy that snow is not a part of our lives, I know that there is something magical about snow in childhood. So every year we pack up some snow gear and drive about an hour to the Sierra Nevada and have a snow day.

This year we pulled Kaylee from school on Wednesday (avoiding the ski crowd) and made a day trip to the snow. We drove to a recreation area and because it was a weekday we were the only people around. There was a huge frozen lake and about 4 feet of snow. We built a massive snowman, went sledding, and had a picnic in the snow. All the while the snow kept falling. It was so neat to see my family experience a true snowfall (and man was it coming down). Being a bit of a worrier I kept asking my husband, "Do you think we should head out soon. There is a lot of snow coming down." And his response, not being much of a worrier at all was, "We are fine." I am not sure why I trusted someone who grew up in a tropical climate to give snow advice. By the fourth time I asked my husband decided he would start packing  up the car. As he trudged to the car Kaylee and I put the finishing touches on our snowman and upon his return he let us know that maybe we stayed a bit longer than we should have.

I am positive someone who lives in snow would roll their eyes at us, but as two people who have never had to be an adult in snow we were a bit worried that the road had disappeared under a blanket of white and we were a mile or so down a windy road. We helped Kaylee get out of her snow gear (can I just say I have so much respect for all the parents out there that have to deal with snow and small children. Man, it is a lot of work dealing with mittens and snow pants and boots and children covered in snow! And my child isn't even  that little anymore!) and we got our way out of the small snowy town we visiting and back to the freeway right as all the snow plows were making their way back to the roads.

Although I find snow absolutely beautiful I am much more of a beach person than a snow person and so usually after we get home and pack  our snow gear back into boxes into the garage I feel a sense of relief that we did our yearly snow trip and we don't have to go again for another year. Maybe because our trip was cut short by the excess of snow, or maybe it was the excietment of having a huge park all to ourselves, or the whimsy of snow dancing around us the entire time we were playing, but for some reason, this year those boxes of snow pants and gloves tucked away on a shelf in the garage seem to be calling to me again already.