Winter is Back

When I was a kid, we lived in house on a cul-de-sac. On an acre of land, where your neighbours were close, but far enough away. In the spring they would tar the street and in the winter the ditches became our forts. That street now has real ashfalt and there are no more ditches. The willow trees that we crawled under have been cut down and the house that we loved is starting to look run down and not well kept (it hasn't been painted on the outside since my Dad last did it in 1978!).

Now my kids will remember that we made them go out and play in the snow. Yes, made them. "A" was not too sure if it would be fun and since he is too cool to own snow pants and proper boots we had to outfit him. Thankfully for him, I went through a stage of owning guys things so he had mens slush pants, men's Doc Martins and men's ski gloves to make him look pretty cool. And I must say in the end he did! "J" of course wanted to only do what his brother was doing, so until "A" started getting ready "J" did not want to go outside. I promised them it would be fun once we were out there. And sure enough, I was right.

Sadly, we only have one adult shovel. Something we are going to correct today. So, "A", Hubby and I traded off shovelling the heavy, dense snow off of the driveway. "J of course used his shovel, but was putting more back onto the driveway than he was takikng off.

After a good area was scraped clean "A" & "J" started to play some hockey. I love it! It reminds me of when I was younger playing outdoor games with my Dad while he was shovelling. The only difference being that he was always still shovelling. Hubby switched gears while I had a turn at piling the snow, he decided the kids needed a snow fort!

So he created a fort worthy of a two year old, with caverns and seats. Of course the dogs wanted in on it and tried to help and when the kid next door came out to play with "A" the two of them used the fort as cover. But, that was ok, it was the best two hours of yesterday! When everyone got to be a kid for a couple of hours and play in the snow.

I hope my kids will look back on days like today and remember them fondly. Yesterday was definately a good reason to love winter. And days like that make winter not seem so bad after all. If only every winter day was as perfect as that.