Snow Day

We woke up this morning to about a foot of snow in our driveway and church canceled so around 10am I headed out to start shoveling. The wind was blowing hard and seemed to be depositing all of the snow in our driveway. Growing up, my Dad's philosophy was "Why do I need a snow-blower when I have 3 strong sons and one whiny daughter?" I headed out (without any of my kids at first) to try and clear off the driveway, while my neighbors snow-blowers whirred in the background. An hour later I was done so Em came and out joined me. We wandered around out back, finding a quiet spot under some brush to sit, cuddle and listen to the wind (isn't that a Cat Stevens song?). As always, Em's thoughts turned to the animals, trying to figure out where they'd be on a day like this. We ended up going on a hike to find animal tracks. We found none - except Rileys.

Each year, whenever we get our firs big snow, we go in the backyard and create a huge pile of snow at the base of the swing set and the kids jump into it. As they've gotten older, their tricks have gotten a little crazier, most of which Cathie wouldn't be crazy about. I showed some common sense in nixing Nate's request to do a flip off the top of the swingset, figuring this wasn't the ideal place to figure out the difference between a diving board and a ten foot drop into snow.

Nate, Em and I edited it into this video: