Winter Storm 2010

The forecasters predicted snow. So the schools closed. And hubs and I laughed and laughed because this is Georgia, people. And I am not referring to the country.

When we woke up the next day and no snow had fallen, all we heard from the boys was, "When?!" And we kept telling them, the weatherman said 2:00, but it probably won't snow. 2:00 came and went, and still no snow. Then, at 2:30, something really weird happened.

Little bitty flakes of white began falling from the sky. And soon our yard looked like this:


Having experienced Midwestern snow on more than one occasion (the kind they measure in feet) we figured we better carpe diem because our boys had never. seen. snow.

This is me, pelting my son with a snowball, as hard as I could. Having never been in a snowball fight, he didn't realize how bad they hurt, and he was beaning everyone left and right. I finally retaliated, as did hubs, except hubs was even meaner. He aimed for the neck and showed him how it feels when an icy snowball explodes into your shirt collar and melts into your undershirt. Yep, we are all about making the experience real:


And there are few times a mom can "abuse" her son and get away with it. Snow days are just one of those times (I promise he laughed through the whole thing, even when I shoved snow down his shirt):


And two of the boys catching flakes:


And the Welsh Corgi, whose instincts for snow took over, even if just for a day. She LOVED the snow, which is great because there is lots of it in Germany:


And the snow just kept falling. The flakes got bigger, and before you know it, we had this:


and this:


And the boys got to eat this:


That's snow, in a bowl, with Tang sprinkled on top.

We are convinced that God made it snow just for us. If we've learned anything about God, it's that He knows how to celebrate (if that statement isn't true for you, I recommend learning more about God). In spite of all the hardships these past 5 months, God has given this family moments to celebrate a bunch of "firsts." Eventually, when the boys are old enough not to hate us, and they have finished plotting our demise (you know, when they're 30), they will look back on this year and realize just how pivotal it was to building our family. Families are built on firsts. We missed so many of them: the first tooth, the first step, the first word; but we have experienced many firsts like the Winter Storm of 2010. Before the night was over, our boys had experienced homemade hot chocolate, sledding (yes...it snowed that much), that painful first snowball to the face, doughnuts in the parking lot (their screams of joy were so loud, I could hear them all the way across the lot, where I waited safely, ready to call 911 should the vehicle flip), and the joy of spending a snow day with a family, snuggled on the couch under quilts and sucking on sweet-tarts.