SNOW DAY! (Day 8 of 40)

I still get excited when the news announces school closings, which means a snow day! It’s that unknown surprise and then the “home time” that I loved as a kid. There was no homework, no commitments, just play! We had the biggest sledding hill in the neighborhood behind our house, and kids would come from all over to sled with reckless abandon on the hill. This was before the days of constant “parental supervision”. I was the youngest in my family, and my siblings knew they had to watch out for me. But all the kids out there watched out for each other. There were no cell phones, or worries about liabilities, we just knew to watch out for the creek at the bottom of the hill, and stay away from the old wall drop off on the left side on the hill. We would see how many kids we could pile on a flexible flyer sled and how long we could stay on it going down the hill without toppling off. We had one of the only toboggans in the neighborhood, and everyone loved getting rides on that! Every once in a while someone would get hurt, thankfully nothing serious, and some how, with no cell phones we managed to get back to our parents, to get bandaged up or taken care of, and then returned outside for more fun!

When we were so cold and wet that we couldn’t stand it anymore, we’d run up the hill to our house. There was a small outside entrance, off our kitchen, halfway down the basement stairs, where we were instructed to enter with our cold, wet, snow covered clothes and boots. That entrance got a lot of use in the winter time and almost none the rest of the year. Once we were rid of our jackets, hats, mittens, snow pants and boots, and shook the cold crusted snow that got stuck inside our boots off our socks, there was always hot chocolate on the stove and popcorn that my mom had made, to warm us up after a hard day of sledding.

I have such good memories of snow days and feel blessed that I could experience the same good memories with my own kids! I think they still love playing in the snow, and warming up with hot chocolate and popcorn! Well maybe that’s turned to beer and nachos now, but the memories are still there! Those were times of being really present with those around me, no wonder I was so happy! :-) #Practicingbeingmorepresent!