They Just Don't Make Them Like They Used To

Around here, "snow day" really should be called "snow hour," because that's about how long the fun lasts until the snow stops...or melts. Admittedly, Johnny woke up yesterday morning as excited as he did on Christmas, "Mommy! Come look! It's snowing outside!" And he wanted to get out in the elements before the sun even came up (see picture) or the coffee was gone. So we did. And I'm glad, for the kids' sake, because it may not come around again this year, or even next. But growing up in Boone? I know a little something about real snow days.

We missed, on average, a good two weeks of school each year due to snow, and that's why we always got out late in June and started early in August. But it was totally worth it. We lived on the best street with the best kids, and our yard sported the best hill of all. All the kids would come out: Stuart, Will, Laurie, Dawn, Brian, Ben, Nathan, and the three of us, for ruthless games of "Batterroids" where we used the rules of "King of the Hill" and the main objective was to keep people from reaching the top of the hill by pushing them down. Sometimes it hurt but it 'hurt so good,' and we were willing to take one for the team for the chance to play with the big kids.

Sledding was awesome, either on a hill in one of our yards, or down our very steep street. Laurie introduced us to the kiddie-pool-plastic sled where five or six of us would pile in a kids' swimming pool and go at it, faster than a speeding bullet, hoping and praying we wouldn't hit a tree, or something worse. We made snow forts and pitted the girls against the boys in all-out snowball wars. The best snow, of course, was packing snow, where you could just begin rolling a little ball across the yard, and all of the snow stuck to it, making the ball bigger and bigger and bigger, leaving a bare grass patch along the way. We made larger than life snowmen, nothing like the pitiful 3-inch snowman the kids and I attempted yesterday. I always knew if it was "good snow" when I looked out the window and saw an even blanket of white spread across the yard, no grass peeking through.

After a morning's full-on snow playing, we'd eventually go inside, cold and hungry, all of us to the S house, for hot chocolate and cookies and a blazing fire. We'd rest, watch MTV, play cards and Atari, then put our snow gear back on and do it all over again in the afternoon and in to the evening. Johnny and Grace don't even know what they're missing.