How we survived SNOWMAGEDDON!
Oh my goodness. After what seems like forever the ‘snowmageddon’ is finally beginning to melt and that means that as a society we can start going out and opening up the shops and the roads and everything else that we had to shutdown because we’re not very good at dealing with small quantities of snow, nevermind the huge drifts we saw this week! As a parent of young children this was obviously an opportunity to unplug the children from their iPads and Xboxes and go “Look children! Nature is happening! Proper weather”
Our children are young enough that our littlest, Claudia, has never really seen snow in any impressive quantity. So going outside in foot-high snowdrifts and going sledging down big hills totally blew her little mind. Morgan, who rarely has mixed feelings on anything, went full tilt into snow-mode and was happily throwing himself face-first into the freezing cold snow and chucking it wildly at his brother and sister. For Marshall it was another social opportunity and he had great fun meeting up with all the other kids that were off school to build igloos and compete in snowball fights.
This year was the first year we went proper sledging. I didn’t even do that as a kid so I was pretty excited even though I was clearly an adult on a child’s-size sled risking my inflexible adult bones in the process. It was still totally worth it.
After a reasonable amount of time outside on the slopes we went inside Britannia Cafe to have a hot chocolate and some cheesy chips. It was a great atmosphere inside and we were able to hang our wet outer-clothes on the radiators in an attempt to get home not completely frozen or soaking wet.
Many of the following days were spent battening down the hatches and staring out of the window wondering why it still hadn’t all melted like it normally does. Lot of indoor activities like colouring, board games and catching up on those cartoons I was always meaning to (I am now hooked on How To Train Your Dragon: Race to the Edge).
The pets were suitably suspicious of the whole thing. After an initial foray into the garden the cats took up shelter under beds and in chests of drawers. Choccy, having not seen a lot of things before, snow included, buried his face in it then ran about like a dog possessed.
As I sit here now the last traces of the white stuff are disappearing and everyone is back to work or school as if the country didn’t just become rural Canada for five days. Roll on spring!
