Snow! Snow! Let's Go!

Ahhhh, snow days... The deeper into motherhood I delve, the more I come to understand my own mother. She was not a fan of snow days. She endured them well, often making homemade chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate for us to return to after we were done playing outside. Still, she was not a fan. Growing up, I thought it was because having all the kids home disrupted her schedule. Well, true that does happen. She thought it was ridiculous to cancel school for an inch of snow. Sometimes just the threat of snow would cancel school, occasionally the threat of snow would cancel school and snow would never materialize and we all got the day off! I can see how that would be irritating to someone who grew up in Utah and not only went to school on snow days but WALKED to school on snow days.

Well guess what, Mom? I finally understand. The house is trashed from a morning of mayhem, the kids beg and barter to be stuffed into many layers of winter wear, they head outside and return home within 40 minutes and have already forgotten they promised to wait in the garage and not track snow through the house. Then, there is the whining that they are cold, wet, FROZEN, and that their hands are stinging. Layer, by drenched and snowy layer, they have to have their clothes peeled off. It is so much better when they peel each layer off individually, rather than just shelling them off in a group so that I get to try to pull each piece apart from the tangled remains.

Of course, within an hour of coming inside they can hear other neighborhood kids out and they want to get back in their snow gear to go outside again. "I don't care if the clothes are still wet," they respond to my very valid protests.

Occasionally stray neighborhood children show up dripping snow inside my house and they too need to be ushered back outside.

Yes, the kids are having fun. Yes, I am going to head downstairs and make some homemade chocolate chip cookies. But, what really is my motive here? Is it that I am being the nice and good mom, trying to fill my kids with the same childhood memories that I enjoyed? Oh wow, that sounds so much better than making the cookies so that I can cope with this SECOND SNOW DAY IN A ROW by emotional eating...

The kids are having fun and Ben was on hand to help the kids get in and out of snow clothes and he actually went out to supervise them in the cold, so this was definitely one of my easier snow day experiences...

On an unrelated note, last night Mylie found two of the little seven dwarf figures that she got at Disney World last September. I think they were Doc and Bashful. Mylie immediately turned them to face each other and made them say, "Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!" to each other. Apparently, all fat men with beards are Santa...