Snowflake

Somewhere on the drive home from the tidepools the other day, I remembered that I'd meant to get Mam started on her snowman project over the four-day weekend. When I asked her when it was due, I found it was the very next day. Awesome! So, we had less than an evening to come up with a way to make a snowman with things from around the house and to get Mam to write a story about said snowman. Smunch did this project a couple of years ago, but I felt compelled to come up with something different this time.

So, as soon as Mam got home from basketball and dinner was done, we started in on a little origami with hot glue, confetti, ribbon, puff balls and googly eyes. Mam named her snowgirl Snowflake and wrote a story about how Snowflake made herself a snow dog and a snow fort, had a snowball fight with her friends and then had her dog scare them all away. Very first grade.

Super Sled

Since I have my own deep-seeded fear of skiing, I'm not particularly anxious to have the kids learn. And, honestly, it was just so nice to kick back and be in no hurry to get anywhere during our whole trip, that I'm inclined to keep it that way. Of course, that almost certainly isn't going to happen. Daddy did go up for a half day of skiing at Squaw Valley. He had a blast.

I had a blast reading my book while Daddy skiied...interrupted at intervals by one or another kid-related incident in the snow outside the cabin. There was some significant screaming and crying and a memorable moment of Mam banging on the cabin door screaming "EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY!!!".

The emergency...which, in truth, was indeed a minor emergency, turned out to be that Smunch had fallen down a hole in the snow next to the cabin and couldn't get himself out. It was even a little bit of an effort for me to drag him out. Sometimes it's nice to have two kids who have an interest in taking care of each other...even as they beat each other up.

Mam managed to give me her cold right before we left for the mountains, so my enthusiasm for snow play was a bit limited. I was glad I'd thought to bring all the ingredients for homemade chicken soup...and a bunch of tea bags for sitting by the fire, reading and sipping.

Daddy was there for much of our time around the cabin, of course and he orchestrated two really killer sled runs for the whole family. The first was right across the street, on a rather steep hill that was several feet deep in snow. We all went out and had a lot of fun sledding down, even though we had more than our share of wipeouts.Well, O.K., maybe that was just me.

Mam seemed to have a great time sledding, squealing all the way down the hill, but she wasn't nearly as interested walking back up the hill and repeating the exercise over and over again as her brother was. She preferred just to sit happily in the snow in her snow bib.By my last sled run of the second day, also on this steep hill, the snow on the trees had melted enough to turn the snow below to ice and one leap into the air and crash to the ice took my tailbone out of commission for the rest of the trip. Ouch! I still haven't quite recovered. From time to time, you can see me go to sit down and pop back up like I've sat on a tack. But no, it's just that bruised rear end of mine.

While Daddy was skiing, I introduced the kids to a far simpler form of sledding, since I wasn't about to chaperone a sled trip on my own...especially as the wipeout queen. Instead, I showed them how to sled down the ramp of snow that the plow left at the end of the driveway.Even though it made for a short sled run, it also meant they could do it by themselves, they could go down head first if they wanted and it wasn't much of a hike to get back to the top.

One of the other things we never got the opportunity to do on our trip back in December was build a snowman. The kids had really wanted to do that. This time, I didn't let them miss out. We started this one on our first day, but the snow was so powdery that it really didn't stick together well...hence the lumpy appearance of this guy. But we had fun putting this one together and my soup ingredients came in handy yet again.S/he does have arms, but Mam insisted on using sticks for arms and they just don't show up with the background.

I don't think we'll make it back up to the snow again this year. I've got plans for camping come spring break, assuming it's not too cold. But I have a new appreciation for vacationing in the winter. We had a great time and really did everything we wanted to do. Next time, though, Smunch says he's going skiing.