snow days

I have tried to write this blog post all week and every day there has been some sort of distraction that has kept me away from this little space on the internet.

First, it was the pure joy of watching the snow fall outside. Then it was all the friends and baking and movie watching we had to do to take full advantage of the weather outside. Then it was the power outages and school delays and yesterday with the kids finally back at school, my brain was literally mush and I just needed a moment to run errands, restock the refrigerator and be alone for a few hours to reenergize.

The snow that fell over the past week is the most we’ve had in the Pacific Northwest in 30 years. Typically we might get an inch or two a few times in the winter, but never like this. It was absolutely magical.

Last week, the kids were released from school two hours early to prepare for #snowmageddon. You never really know if the weatherman is telling the truth or not, but when the snow started coming down and didn’t stop, we hoped he was.

After about two hours, our yard looked like this:

Truly, this would have been a really fun snow storm for us, but as the days went on and the snow kept falling, we ended up with this:

How gorgeous is all that snow?!!

When we woke the first morning after a full night of snow, the view out our bedroom window was beautiful.

One of the best parts of snow (especially for us who usually have to drive up to the mountains to find it) is that it makes you want to get outside and play in it.

The kids spent hours outside sledding, playing, laughing, building. they would take breaks for food and warmth and then head back outside again. I’m sure if you live where the snow is just always there it doesn’t hold as much entertainment value, but for our little northwest kids, it was a true delight.

The boys worked for hours and hours on a pretty incredible snow fort complete with wood beam ceilings, a separate bedroom, a snow couch, and coat hooks. I’m always so impressed with their creativity, ingenuity, persistence and utter joy in building. There is a lesson in there for us: find a thing that makes you excited to work hard, then do it.

One of my favorite parts of the snow was how it made the inside of our house practically glow! We struggle with natural light all times of the year, but especially during our dark winters so this week of brightness was a happy surprise.

The final downpour of snow was one of the most enjoyable days I can remember. We had a bunch of friends over, scrounged together lunch and snacks, played games, built snowmen, chatted with my girlfriends over warm cups of tea.

Us moms decided we couldn’t let all this snow happen without us taking full advantage of it and we threw on our snow stuff to go play outside.

I love having friends who will be silly and go sledding and take pictures and catch snow on our tongues. We’re all just children in adult bodies, aren’t we?!

Our cute house looked even more adorable covered in snow. So much so that I just had to paint it for one of my daily sketches (see them all over on instagram).

It may have taken me a week to sit down long enough to share a recap of our snowy days, but truth be told, part of what made it so magical was that it was totally unexpected and a break from the norm. Every day we kept waking up wondering what we would see outside, wondering if there would be power or if school and activities would be canceled or who we would play with that day.

I love a routine and the older I get, the more set in my ways I can be (oops, I don’t mean to be, I promise) so this ruffling of normal was both super fun and a little unsettling in the moment. But it was all worth it.

And we hope it doesn’t take another 30 years before we have a snowfall like this again.