Things to Do with Your Kids During a Snowstorm

We're expecting our first doozy of a snowstorm this year starting in the middle of the night tonight. My kids are in hybrid school and were scheduled for asynchronous online learning tomorrow, which means that their schedule is unaffected by the storm. Fortunately, other than a 30-minute check-in with their assistant teacher at a specific time, they can get their work done on their own time. Which means we can go outside and play in the snow almost whenever we want. Given the pandemic, I feel like this may even be an opportunity to get together with friends for a sledding date. Masks will be appreciated in the snow and cold, and single-person sleds are perfect for social distancing. Since we live directly across the street from a park with a fabulous sledding hill, I can even sponsor a hot cocoa party in the parking lot afterwards. 

If you are in a similar situation and may be looking to take a work break and hang with your kids tomorrow (inside or out), here is a list of great things to do with your kids on a snowy day.

• Go sledding. (Duh.)
• Make snow angels. (Double duh.)
• Blow bubbles and watch them freeze.
• Collect fresh snow and make sno-cones.
• Have a snowball fight.
• Fill small balloons with water and a few drops of food coloring and leave them outside to freeze, then peel off the balloons and line your walkway with multicolored "crystal" balls.
• Have a hot cocoa tasting. Experiment with using water, milk, and half and half; whipped cream vs. marshmallows; dip the rim with a little hot cocoa and roll it in colored sugar; try adding a squirt of caramel or coffee syrup.
• Bake cookies.
• Bake bread.
• Make soup.
• Go ice skating.
• Have a board game marathon.
• Make s'mores over the fireplace. Or over the stove top if you don't have a fireplace.
• Pull out the toasting forks and toast bread or cook hotdogs over the fire.
• Read one of your favorite childhood books out loud. 
• Go shovel a neighbor's driveway together.
• Shovel out all the fire hydrants on your street together.
• Pop a bunch of popcorn and make a garland to add to your Christmas tree.
• Go through some old family albums and tell them stories about when you were their age.
• Watch a holiday movie together.
• Teach your kids a new skill: how to sew on a button, how to change a tire (best if you have a garage), how to do laundry, how to fry an egg, how to change a lightbulb.
• Do a home improvement project together: hang a picture, level a table, repaint a wall, caulk a window.
• Plan a vacation. Either a real one that could actually happen after the pandemic, or a dream one. Show them how to research online. Set a budget. Make choices based on that budget. 
• If you have a bird feeder, teach them to identify some of the common birds. If you don't, sprinkle some birdseed on top of the snow and see how long it takes the birds to find it. Spread a pine cone with peanut butter and roll it in birdseed, then hang it from a tree for the birds. 
• Make a snowman. Don't forget to give it a hat, a scarf, and a carrot nose.
• Go for a walk in the snow. 
• Catch snowflakes on your tongue. 
• Do karaoke. Let the kids teach you one of their favorite songs. Teach them one of yours.
• Have a dance party in the living room. 
• Try on all the clothes in each of your wardrobes. Put everything that doesn't fit in a bag and donate it. 
• Have the kids go through all their old toys and donate ones they've outgrown. Throw away anything that's broken or has missing pieces. 
• Collect all your loose change and put them into coin rolls. 
• Teach them how to polish silver and have a tea party with your fancy silver and china.
• Have breakfast for dinner.
• Eat dinner in reverse, starting with dessert. 
• Wear your pajamas all day. Stuffed animals optional.
• Bring your sleeping bags into the living room and watch a movie that ends past their bedtimes.

Whatever you love to do with your family, do that. Whatever your kids love to do, do it with them. Let them spirit move. Don't be afraid to be silly. Don't feel you need to follow any kind of rules. Let yourself have fun. 

Happy snow day!

Snow Blessings

For what feels like the 6^th or 7^th time in the last two weeks, I am looking out my front door at a wonderland of fresh snow. It’s getting to look significantly less wonderful at this point. I was born and raised in New England, and lived through the infamous Blizzard of ’78, so bouts of snow in January and February are no surprise. Neither are snowdrifts 6 or 8 feet high. But this many significant storms in such a brief period of time are getting old. It’s like eating an entire gallon of ice cream in a single sitting: at first it’s pretty fun, but after a while it just makes you want to throw up.

But if the curses of all this snow are things like the kids missing school, trying to figure out where to put all the snow you’re shoveling, constantly running out of ice melt and washer fluid, scrubbing the trails of tracked-in snow off the kitchen floor every day, and general cabin fever, what are the blessings? I mean, there ARE times when we like snow, right? So how can I put a positive mental spin on all this snow? Here’s a list of the “snow blessings” that I came up with:

•         It looks pretty. Seriously, there’s nothing quite as lovely as looking out your bedroom window as the sun is coming up and seeing a soft, perfect blanket of white covering everything.
•         It sounds pretty. All the ambient noises are muffled, even silenced, in the falling snow. There’s a beautiful serenity in that stillness.
•         It gives me extra time with my kids. And I get creative about it. I do think of myself as a creative mom in general, but I sometimes get lazy. Spending a few snow days thinking up new and different games, concentrating on what my kids would most enjoy, just sitting on the floor with them DOING stuff together, is a wonderful blessing.
•         It makes me thankful for my husband. Especially today, when he’s away and I’m on my own to clear the driveway and the car, it reminds me how much work he does when it snows. It reminds me to be more appreciative of not only that, but of all the quiet, unnoticed things he does around the house: taking out the trash, replacing lightbulbs, hauling boxes up the attic stairs, charging my electric toothbrush, maintaining the pool, and probably a whole list of stuff I don’t even realize that he does. Thank you, sweetheart.
•         It gives you a chance to simply play. Making snow angels. Building snowmen. Going sledding, Having snowball fights. Making sno-cones and fake ice cream. Building a snow fort. Building a snow cave. Jumping into a big pile of soft fluffy snow with both feet. Blazing a trail through virgin snow. Finding footprints of animals and birds and trying to identify them. Catching snowflakes on your tongue.
•         It give you the chance to be neighborly. Taking a break for a few moments to lean on your shovel and catch up with a neighbor whom you rarely see. Shoveling out common sidewalks and fire hydrants. Snowblowing or shoveling out an older or injured neighbor. Sending your kids across the street to play with the neighbors’ kids or inviting them into your yard.
•         It’s cause for a whole list of delicious food and drink. Hot chocolate with whipped cream and/or marshmallows, hot tea in your favorite mug, homemade soups and stews, fresh bread, anything that can be made in a crockpot, chicken pot pie, lasagna, pot roast, shepherd’s pie, all those hearty casseroles your mom used to make for Sunday dinner. They’re comforting for body and soul.

So yeah, you might throw your back out trying to shovel the results of the latest storm on top of the results of the last seventeen storms. And you’ll probably run out of bread and milk and eggs and batteries and ice melt. You might even break a shovel. You’ll definitely break a sweat. But amidst your cursing, try and find a few of the blessings on this list. It won’t make spring come any earlier, but hopefully it’ll being at least a tiny bit of thaw to even the most frozen heart. 

Snowmageddon

Last night when I went to bed, I peeked out the window and watching the falling snow swirling in the air, hurling itself at the trees, whisking past the fairy lights hanging from the eaves, drifting past the dark cars in the driveway. This morning when I got up, I peeked out the window at a silent, white world. The drifting snow had sculpted itself into fantastical shapes, disguising the familiar objects in the yard, covering the landscape with swirls and cones and angles.

I love snowstorms. Of course, I don’t love digging out from under a foot of snow, or scraping a thick layer of ice off my car, or driving on ice-slick roads. But I love the blustery sound of the wind during a storm and the blanket of silence afterwards. I love watching the snow dancing on the wind in an intricately choreographed ballet. I love hearing the first peeps of the birds as they emerge after the snow ends, huddled and fluffing and eagerly seeking out food. I love the flash of a bright red cardinal against a pure-white snowbank. I love the icicles artistically dripping from power lines and eaves and car antennas. I love the squeak of damp snow under thick-soled boots. I love the wet thump of clots of snow sliding off a roof into the bushes below. I even love the pure, clean, cold smell of the air after a snowstorm.

By the end of the winter, I’ll be as sick of snow as everyone else, longing to see some green leaves peeping through the dirty gray slush. But now, right after the very first big storm of the season, I love it. The first storm of the season, to me, is like a dish of cool, icy sorbet to cleanse your palate. It perks up your senses, it cleanses and purifies, it readies you for what is yet to come.

So today, I will enjoy the snow. I will wait for the sun to sparkle on the ice and dazzle my eyes with its splendor. I will snuggle with a cozy blanket and a mug of steaming coffee and listen to the whistle of the wind. I will watch the birds storing up for the storms still to come. I will be thankful for my cozy house and my full refrigerator and my shoveling husband.

And a few months from now, when we’ve had a dozen storms like this, when we’ve dug out from under more inches of snow than I care to count, when we’ve risked our necks driving through white-outs and skidding over black ice, when I’m thoroughly sick of the nasty white stuff, I’ll look back at what I’ve just written, and wonder, “What the heck was I thinking back in December?”

Stormy Weather

As a life-long New Englander, I’ve lived through my share of storms. The Blizzard of ’78, Hurricane Gloria, “The Perfect Storm”, the April Fool’s Day Storm, the 2008 ice storm, Hurricane Bob, even the flooding of this past spring…I survived them all. I’ve lost my car under a snowbank, I’ve been without power for a week, I’ve had no phone for a day or two, my employer has sent me home or told me not to come to work. I’ve learned to keep warm by a fireplace, to read by candlelight, to feed myself without a stove or microwave, and to keep up with the latest news by way of a battery-powered (or hand cranked!) transistor radio. I’ve learned to keep a stockpile of food, water, and batteries on hand at all times. And so have most of my friends and neighbors. So why is there always a last-minute stampede at the grocery store every single time we have a storm warning?

I suppose it’s because we New Englanders pride ourselves on being able to endure anything. And it would be pretty tough enduring a power outage if you had no batteries for your flashlights. Or being snowed in and not having any milk or bread. Or having no water and running out of bottled water. But seriously, it’s a brush with a hurricane. Do we really expect a week-long power outage? Do people honestly not have any batteries in the house? Are people genuinely convinced that the world will come to an end if there’s no milk in the fridge for 18 hours? And if it comes to that, do we really think that milk we just stormed the grocery store to get will keep unrefrigerated for 18 hours anyway?

I think the truth is that we enjoy our hardships. I’ll admit, I’ve bragged about living through the Blizzard of ’78. Yeah, the snow was halfway up the windows. Yeah, we (and by “we”, I mean “my dad”) had to shovel the front steps every half hour so the door didn’t get jammed shut with snow. Yeah, there was no school for a week because the buses couldn’t get through. Yeah, we had no power for a few days so we ate hotdogs from the freezer that we cooked over the fire in the fireplace every night. So every time a storm comes along, I think New Englanders secretly hope it’s one for the record books, and we prepare for the worst in the hope that it really is the worst – or at least, bad enough to brag to our kids about how we managed to endure Hurricane Earl back in September of 2010.