Winter

This winter has been the one from my dreams.

Huge storm after huge storm as rolled in. I haven't seen grass (or in the case of my backyard - weeds) for longer than I can remember. It snows, it freezes, it begins to thaw, then snows again.

Then in some crazy twist of fate we got freezing rain on top of it all.

But the inversion and the freezing have made the snow less than fun to play in. Crunchy and black and icky.

So when it snows fresh white powder from a clear blue sky yesterday we took full advantage.

Josh was shoveling the driveway (for the 3rd time in less than 24 hours) and John was napping, so obviously Tommy and I bundled up and went out to "get Daddy!"

We had to find the edge of yard with the smallest snow drifts (shorter than Tommy) to enter the yard to get to our sledding "hill". 

Tommy was thrilled when I told him we could sled.

Sledding Tommy

Sledding Tommy

He loves it. Even at the bottom of our hill.

With each run the track got longer and longer. Then it got so long (OK, you should know that this is a seriously short hill....) that Tommy crashed into our neighbors car which they have to park in their yard because there's no street parking in the winter.

Poor boy, he hit the van head first and started crying and whining. I came down the hill to give him a big hug and kisses and he sniffled and cried because his tears were "frozen bo bozen right on my cheeks."

But I told him we could be all done sledding and head to the backyard to eat the fresh snow back there if he wanted to. He perked right up and raced me back there.

Say what you will about driving and being stuck inside and everything else, but there are few things more beautiful than a fresh snow. 

Our beautiful backyard.

 When you have a fresh canvas, you are required to play circle tag before anything else. Fortunately we had just been to story time and Ms. Diane (aka Grandma Marsh - Tommy's cousins' grandma) taught him how to walk like a penguin. So I started making the track and had Tommy and Josh follow behind me to tramp it down.

I explained the rules to Tommy (and Josh...who apparently doesn't know anything about fun.), you have to stay in the track (a circle with 6 spokes through the middle), and once you always have to move forward. No about-facing. If you start one way down a spoke, you have to finish it up - at least to the middle.

Tommy immediately changed the rules. "I'm a tiger! You're the giraffe! You're the elephant! NOW, make your sounds." And we still played tag. Running in full snow gear on top of the snow is tricky anyway, so it's a legitimately fun game - even for grown ups.

We all had a blast. But no one more than Tommy.

I bribed him with hot chocolate to come inside, but he didn't want to. So I told him he could color his story time homework. (Bless you Grandma Marsh.) and he came willingly. 

Later while we snuggled on the sofa and looked at pictures, he stopped on the picture of him by the van and started getting weepy again. "I did runned right into that van with my noggin' and it made me feel so sad....like this...." he recapped. 

I always feel bad holding out the fun things for when John naps, but the truth is he would've wrecked that activity. I'm working on including him more, even though it takes more effort. Because the other truth is that the boy LOVES things. He thinks everything is new and exciting and fun and life changing (because it is) and when he loves something, we ALL love it more.

So let's all pray for another big storm so I can do better at including him OK?