I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

No, actually, I just had one.\par
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And I have to say… a White Christmas is highly overrated! Not that I’m not taken by the first appearance of snow, and the beauty of the landscape covered in white. Truly, I’m always delighted when we get “real” snow (defined by me as when the snow is high enough to cover the tops of the grass). But when the snow starts one Sunday, causing church to be cancelled, and sort of hangs on all week causing all of the Christmas parties and events to be cancelled, dumps a whole bunch more on us as my parents are trying to drive down the gorge, causes church to be cancelled again (one Sunday was relaxing, two gets to be a little old..), nearly prevents my family from flying out of PDX, keeps me housebound for 3 more days, and finally makes it necessary to chain up, merely to get out of our driveway so we could go to my in-laws for Christmas…. well, it makes one glad that most of our Christmases are a lovely, drizzly Oregon green.\par
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It wasn’t all bad, of course. For one thing, Michael had to stay home Monday and Tuesday, effectively getting the whole week off (although he did some work from home for the first three days). The boys were excited to see the snow, and got plenty of opportunities to experiment with it. Judah was starting to get into the possibilities of playing in the snow, and even took our saucer for a spin right in front of our house. No, our hill’s not that steep, so he really didn’t move much, but there was one slick part where he picked up speed a little, and he thought that was pretty fabulous. Ezra however, when it got really deep (say 12+ inches) would just go outside and stand there. After all, he could barely walk, and it’s not like we have snow pants or anything around here, so every movement pushed more snow into his boots. He didn’t stay out long. We spent\’c2\~more time pursuing indoor activities, such as painting, baking cookies, and playing board games.\’c2\~But on Christmas Eve day we all went sledding. We dressed as warmly as we could, packed the baby in our jogging stroller, and made our way down to a little walking park near our house that had several lovely pre-prepared (by other sledders) sledding runs just the right size for a 5 and 3 year old. Even sedate old me went down a few times, shrieking all the way, just for the fun of it. I’d post pictures, but wouldn’t you know it… I forgot the camera!