Snowy Traditions

I really dislike winter. Oh I like how it looks for Christmas time and as a novelty of the changing seasons. But, I detest being cold such that Winter is by far my least Fav season. I do try to make it into something fun and, at least once a year, have an outside playdate with my kids. I try to choose a warm (relative to winter, of course) sunny day. It also has to have the perfect snow (sunshine is a secret ingredient of this also cuz it melts the snow a little and makes it more sticky for building stuff.

2 years ago we didn’t have a big enough snow so that there was any snow to speak of in the spring. and last year I was not in a good enough place to be the “fun” mom. I thought that, after the big melt this year, that mother nature wouldn’t be cooperating again and I wouldn’t be able to pull It off.

Then we got dumped on. More than a foot overnight! We had gone from the sunny greening grass beautiful day lets’put-up-the-tramp and get the porch swing out to scraping the driveway again 3 times in one day. This was the day!

I jumped into my snowpants and dived in. The snow wasn’t awesome but it packed okay and with T’s help I built a fair enough fort. Because this was new snow the thing was perfectly camouflaged from the bus stop vantage point. Once inside and hunkered down we could not be seen. T invented a brilliant way to make a peeky hole (handle of the broom) and we made a weapons cache and staked out the bus stops.


First was the junior high kids. They weren’t as easy to surprise. But we still got in some good licks. Of course, the girls ran by just out of our range squealing and fast stepping in their girlish shoes, but the boys launched a counterattack. They are much better shots then when they were little and have had a few years practice on me doing this to them.

It was fun tho. S just casually got the mail and then was our photographer for the next round. I guess the novelty of this little game has run out for her. My nephew, being the oldest and wisest of that group, said “Oh yea, Lisa, that’s real mature!” but he was the one that stuck around the longest, fired off the most return fire, and obviously liked it even better than the little kids did. We must be related!


Then it was time to ambush J’s grade school stop in the other direction. Of course this wasn’t as great as it used to be because the bus stop has moved. Used to be that all 20 kids had to pass our house to get home and it was a perfect ambush spot. Now we only get 3 kids walking by plus J.

Of course, he was the slow one on this day and we had launched our attack and were holding the invaders off when he finally noticed what was going on. He immediately skirted the blast zone and ran into the house. hmmm not what I was hoping for. When he finally came out to join the fray he was able to breech the defensive wall by attacking from the unprotected rear.

I am definitely finding a better spot next year.
We had a great time and now the snow can melt and not return until next Christmas thank you.