Snow day

"Cover your eyes," I told Jennifer this morning, as I had my hand on the door handle.

Smiling, she obeyed, standing in front of the closed door with anticipation.

When I opened the door, I smiled at her and said, "Open them!"

She removed her hands, got all wide-eyed and excited at the snowy landscape that was our front yard, then excitedly jumped up and down. "Christmas is coming!"

Oh, yeah. One thing kids think of when they see snow: Christmas. And snow balls and snowmen. Snow angels and sledding.

And, let us not forget: Snow days!

That's what she had today. Last night, it snowed and snowed and snowed. I was in shock at how much snow we got. (Heck, I haven't lived here in the Northwest long enough to get used to seeing snow. ANY snow makes me shocked! Haha. It's been too long since I have lived back East.) Last year, we got NO SNOW before Christmas. I am hopeful that this means this year, we'll finally have a "white Christmas." I didn't think the school would declare today a snow day, but that's exactly what they did. Jennifer was sooo excited to go outside and play in the snow. The problem was, she could only find her old snow boots, not the ones that fit her. But she still went out to play in her regular shoes. My husband, of course, saw snow and thought "work." He had to scrape snow and ice off of both our cars. NO. FUN. Ugh! Kids see snow and think "fun." Lucky them.

Jennifer had some difficulty figuring out how to make a snowball. I haven't lived in snowy cities for too long and can't remember too well how to make them. I just stood on the porch, freezing my tail off, trying to instruct her on how to pat the snow into a ball, roll it in the snow to make it bigger and sort of "squeeze" it real gently to keep it in a ball shape. But despite my best efforts, she couldn't figure it out. But she tried her best to make some kind of creations with the snow. (Not much luck on a snowman, either.)

Later in the day, though, she started feeling sick again. She sort of caught Jesse's virus and her temperature has been going up and down since Saturday. So she wasn't able to go out to play in the snow much more after that set in, but at least she had some snow fun in the morning.

Update on Jesse: His breathing is still a little bad. This morning, it was pretty raspy. Looks like it's another round of the antibiotics the doctor prescribed, since it's been the 3-day-wait they told us to monitor his breathing. I am hoping this second dose will make the swelling go down some more. Fortunately, he has been acting a lot better.