Nearest and Dearest: Good Snow Day

I love a good snowstorm and the subsequent good snow day. I remember growing up in Pennsylvania and how eagerly I would anticipate snow. Standing in the living room watching out the picture window to see if the snow was still falling and hoping that school would be cancelled the next day. My dad used to take Eric and I to this great sledding hill near his house and we would sled for hours. My favorite memory is him taking me late at night to the snow packed road behind his house and having me lay on his back while he pushed off and we coasted for what felt like a mile.

I recognized that when we left Ohio and moved to Georgia that I was giving snowstorms and snow days up for more reasonable temperatures year round. This past Thursday however, the forecasters here started predicting a "Major Winter Storm." It's hard to get excited because here in Georgia "Major"is an inch or two and several times after predictions, we haven't even gotten that much. In the North, we would laugh at all this build up. Bud and I drove from Pa. to Ohio in 14 inches of snow one Valentines Day. However, as my Southern husband pointed out, this is the South where there are not big silos of salt or plows just waiting for winter weather or people that know how to drive in it.

The television coverage begin in earnest two days ago and has continued almost unabated since then. We were truly surprised to see the flakes start to fall last night and keep falling. The girls school was cancelled last evening (good call) and I knew that I wouldn't be heading into work at 7 am this morning. When we woke up, we had five inches in our backyard and a 1/4" inch of freezing rain that had fallen on top of that. We were not only not leaving early to get to work, we were not going in at all.

The afternoon was spent playing outside, shoveling the driveway (so glad we didn't get rid of the shovel when we left Ohio) and playing with the girls. We were the only ones in the neighborhood with a sled so we worked on a great sledding path that went along the side of our street down the big hill. It took a bit of coaching to get the girls to understand that you can't walk back up the middle of the sledding path, drag your feet behind you while you are sledding or let the inner tube slide across the asphalt and even more work to teach the neighbor kids the same thing but we persisted and a great time was had by all.

Tonight we will watch more coverage on the storm, eat crab legs and baked potatoes by the fire and play Apples To Apples. What a great snowstorm and great snow day.