The year it snowed

I’m not sure if you heard or not, but we had, believe it or not, a White Christmas in these parts.  I’ve lived in North Texas most of my life – all, in fact, except for about 1 1/2 years when we lived in Northern Virginia.  I can’t remember when we’ve ever had such a snow right at Christmas-time.  It actually snowed Christmas Eve and boy, it was cold and windy to boot. 

We stayed in for a bit to let some accumulate, then it was me at the forefront pushing the kids out the door… “Let’s go play!!” 

Did you realize that different kinds of snow are good for different kinds of play?  This was a fairly dry snow so it wasn’t sticking together very well for our snowman building purposes.  The kids had little patience for it, so we made the typical Texas snowman – no taller than the kids’ knees.

And while wet snow is better for snowman building, dry snow such as this is great for sledding.  Ice & sleet also work for this, by the way… you learn that pretty quickly growing up in Texas because that’s usually what you get. 

Would you believe that my dad bought Sarah a sled while we still lived in Virginia when he came up to visit once?  We moved back to Texas before we had a chance to use it up there and hadn’t had a decent snow here since we had been back.  We had intended to get rid of it several times but never had.  And here we were, 4 1/2 years later using it for the first time.  We found a gentle hill at the back of our neighborhood and it was perfect, especially for the 4 year old’s first time sledding.

And you know what?  As I hopped on the sled with Nathan on Christmas Eve I realized and told him that the last time I had gone sledding, he was in my tummy.  Funny.

We had a ball and got really cold and were late to our Christmas Eve service at church.  But that was okay because we had snow.

It was cold enough that night that we still had it Christmas Day, so Mike took the kids out to a taller, slightly steeper hill that morning.  Before long, other families began to show up with trash can lids and all kinds of things to use as sleds.  It became a little neighborhood party and was so fun for Christmas Day.

 

I know a White Christmas is pretty normal for some of you, to the extent that you even expect it.  But like I said, it’s rare around these parts. 

So 2009 will forever in our minds be remembered as “The year it snowed at Christmas.”