Today was a good, full day. When we woke up, it was already snowing, and it snowed hard ALL DAY till 5:00pm. While Jay and Rose were practicing piano and getting ready for school, I made the executive decision to stay home and have our own private snow day. When there was bad weather during my freshman year of college, our cross country team captains would sometimes decide whether or not we would go on our morning run. If our coach didn't show up early enough to make the call himself, the team captains would step in and decide for him. They jokingly called it an "executive decision." The rest of the team would be sitting on the floor at 6am, bleary-eyed and cold from the dash from bed to gym. I still remember the slightly guilty feeling of relief when the men's team captain said "I'm making the executive decision--we are not running this morning." No wet run in the cold soaking rain was GOOD. I have called weather-based decisions executive decisions ever since.
This morning I didn't tell Jay and Rose that they could stay home from school until after they had practiced piano--then I called them together and said "I have a proposal. Let's have a movie day today! First we'll clean the upstairs, vacuum, fold laundry, then we'll go outside to get some fresh air and play in the snow, and after that we'll watch movies." Jay caught on first and soon both he and Rose were celebrating our personal snow day. This turned out to be a stroke of genius. The family room was a disaster after Rose's birthday festivities yesterday, and they picked everything up willingly in no time! The also cleaned their rooms and made their beds lickety-split, happy as can be. While they worked, I worked too. I swept the kitchen and helped Amber pick up blocks. I started some laundry and then began vacuuming. When I finished that long process (we have a lot of carpet), I handed the vacuum over to Rose and Jay, and they each vacuumed their rooms. Then we bundled up and went outside into the thickly falling snow for a little adventurous wintry exercise. Thankfully the temperature outside was in the high twenties so it wasn't that bitter, searing single-digit cold that we have unenjoyed during previous snowfalls this winter.
It has been weeks since I went out in the snow to play with my kids--the snow lost its novelty and charm on me when it didn't melt after the first week, and it has been lying around in single-digit temperature stubbornly for six weeks now! Today the roads were thickly covered and unplowed as usual: perfect for a one-mom-open-sleigh ride! I laced up my grippiest trail running shoes and turned on my watch. The kids piled onto Grampa Dan's old sled and with an extra-firm tug, we were off! Amber immediately started singing her version of Jingle Bells ("oh beow, oh be-ow, oh-awayyyy!") and it made us all feel festive and free. We did one loop around our neighborhood, stopping halfway so I could give individual rides to each kid at a faster speed than I could manage while pulling all three. I ended up jogging a mile pulling kids on the sled, and my time was 17 minutes. Talk about a slow-mo-jog-in-the-snow!
During winter I am all about getting my heart rate up--anything that gets my heart pumping for 20 minutes counts as my exercise for the day. This one mile sled run fit the bill perfectly. I had to peel off a layer halfway through because it worked so well as a workout! For the last three minutes of my alloted 20 minute workout, I took the kids out to the soccer field and ran zigzag loops around them while they played. The half melted and refrozen six inch crust of hardened icy snow that was underneath the freshly fallen 3 inches of powder did hilarious things to my gait. I felt like a Tennessee walking horse wearing chains and platform shoes for the first time--then realized that a very few people would understand that reference. Every step I jogged, my foot would sink through the fresh powder, pause for half a second when it hit the crust underneath, then crunch through that crust and sink up to my ankle. It was very unsteady going, and I was stomp-clomping and waving my elbows in a very awkward way to get in that last 3 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. I kept laughing at myself as I floundered along. It was actually a very intense workout, utilizing many less-prominent stabilizing muscles. When I finished my 20 minutes, I had traveled a mile and a quarter. Later, when those little detail muscles started complaining, I decided that the workout quality of that 1.25 miles was equivalent to 5 or 6 miles on a non-snowy paved road. Normal running is going to feel so easy if this snow and ice ever melt!
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| We stopped to see if the cousins were home, but they weren't, so Jay cast a patronus charm in their yard: expecto patronum! His patronus is a stag, FYI. |
Our back fence has a gate that opens onto the high school soccer field, but it was frozen shut by several inches of ice piled around the bottom, so the kids slid through the gap on one side while I climbed the gate, wobbling precariously, and dropped down into the deep crusty snow in the field on the other side. We played in the snow for a while after I finished my "run." I took what I thought were somewhat artistic pictures of my cute kids playing in the heavy thick snowfall. Rose and I built a small powdery snow-pile and drew a smiley face on one side with our fingers (all of the sticks and rocks we would normally use to make a face on a snow-person were frozen under six inches of ice). We called our creation a snow-ghost and he was really quite cute, in spite of our limited resources.
This bench was completely buried in snow--Jay uncovered the seat and walked on it like a balance beam.
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| The thickly falling snow was really only visible against a dark background. It was falling fast the entire time we were outside, but it is only visible in pictures with the fence in the background. |
Amber walked around with her lower lip protruding, probably to catch snowflakes. I love that profile.
Patting powder into place is a technique Rose has perfected over the past few months.
Cute Rose with her cute snow-ghost.
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| Jay through the fence. |
We mountain-climbed up our thickly iced back porch steps--the iced weeks-old snow was thick enough to make the steps into a ramp--and went inside through the kitchen door. The kitchen is our biggest non-carpeted floor, and we were all covered in snow head to toe thanks to the thick deluge dumping from the sky for our entire hour spent facing the elements. We lined our wet boots and gloves up along the wall and hung our wet coats and snowpants on kitchen chairs by the table. I whipped up some frothy hot chocolate and we feasted on peanut butter toast, crackers, hot chocolate, and carrots for an early lunch/elevensies.
After our morning of hard work and harder play, it was finally time for the movie portion of our homemade snow day (I felt crafty that our "movie day" was starting so late). The kids retreated to the basement to watch two "beep-beeps" with Amber before she went down for her nap, then they picked out the old Gene Wilder Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory movie for their afternoon indulgence. I popped in the old video tape for them and then went upstairs to read and check on how my photographic attempts turned out. Eventually I hit a wall from all of the activity of the day and sat alternately reading and staring out the window at the white world beyond. Jeff got home early because his teacher meetings were canceled due to the snow and we all hung out doing various quiet or semi-quiet activities. Then we had leftovers for dinner.
Now is the part where I try to sum up the entire day that I just described in precise detail by filling in the blank: "It was __________." I think the best adjective for today is probably "white." It was a wonderful white snow day." Or maybe I should say "It was a wonderful White snow day." After all, puns are my one weakness.
End journal entry. I don't usually write quite that long of journal entries, but February 8th was a day I wanted to remember, so I made it juicy. It was one of those days where motherhood is amazing, kids are fun, and we were all excited to spend the day at home together. I always try to write about the dramatic days in detail (both good days and bad days) because time slips away so fast and I want to remember as much as possible. Words and pictures are my treasures--one day they will be all I have to look back on, so I want to have plenty to read and look at and remember in my old age. Also, school was officially canceled for real the next day (Feb 9th), so we had two snow days back to back--one homemade, one official. At this rate, we'll still have school on Independence Day!
