Our Christmas 2010 - The Snow

The White Christmas didn't quite happen this year. But we new that something was on its way nevertheless. I had this humongous headache that I get every time it's about to rain or snow. It didn't seem cold enough for snow though. As we drove home from our friends' on Christmas evening, we noticed a few drops on the windshield.

So imagine our surprise when we woke up to THIS:

Yep, 6 inches of soft fluffy snow and more falling. I was fully intent on sleeping late, but how could I?! Not when it was so beautiful and fairy-tale-y outside. I did have a thought that we should probably re-pack the gift and replay the entire Christmas morning, including pineapple pancakes. How absolutely gorgeous would that be? So very Christmas-y! Instead, we all got dressed in many layers and went outside into the snow.

So we played some games, walked through the snow, and taught M to make snow angels. He, in turn, taught us how to snow-swim. After a bit of snow-swimming he needed to go home to warm up and dry off his clothes.

While in the house, we experimented with snow - melting it, then evaporating the water. The big words learned - "water vapor", "evaporating", "solution", "mixture", and, for some reason, "flavor". On his own M made an excellent observation that to make water boil faster or more vigorously he just needed to add some salt to it.

Once the clothes were dry, Chris took M onto the deck to collect some fresh clean snow for snow cream. But instead of the plain vanilla (1 cup milk, 1/2 cup sugar, some vanilla and as much snow as you feel like eating), we went fancy with a chocolate-cranberry-pecan snow cream. Delicious! (At least the first 3-4 spoons before the whole thing melts).

After another round of running the dryer and mopping the floors, we went outside once again. This time we went sledding.

You see, we have this hill in the neighborhood, just around the corner from us, that is perfect for sledding. On a good snowy day you can see most of our neighbors there. Last year we rode on the sled with M, but this year he was big enough and said that he wanted to ride alone.

Then, at the bottom of the hill, we had a good old snowball fight. We then got back home and M played some more with his one and only Christmas gift.