12/18/06: Oh, the Weather Outside...

... was simply delightful!

Yes, it was our first snowfall! To those of you in the eastern or northern parts of the country, that may sounds nice but rather ho-hum. But please remember that I live in San Diego County in Southern California, where a snowfall is an EVENT. People come driving up the mountain, without snow tires or chains, sliding around the icy meadows in flip flops and hauling huge amounts of snow back "down the hill" in the beds of their trucks. That's life when one lives in the mountains during winter.

In fact, I woke up this morning to a young lady from our church in the city, calling to see if we had snow in our small town. I told her that we didn't and that she'd have to try further up the mountain. However, I had to call her back a few hours later to tell her differently.

On Sunday morning we awoke to a nearly transparent dusting of snow on the ground. The boys were uninterested in such a paltry showing. But today ... REAL SNOW!

I had e-mailed a friend from church that we had a 30% chance of "frozen mix" (which sounds more like a margarita than a weather prediction), according to the local online weather source based at the school down the street. About 1:00 this afternoon, we looked outside and the yard was white! Snow was falling in clumps of flakes, and yes, the kids and I were right out in the middle of it as soon as we suited up. We caught snow on our tongues. We scraped it off the hood of my car in order to make slush balls. We let Dash, our dachshund, take a run through the fresh powder. T built a snow otter on our front porch railing, tail and all.

With Dash on his leash, the kids and I took a short walk to the school and back through the meadow, singing "Winter Wonderland" and "White Christmas." We even made up a song about the little red mini dachshund straining at his leash for the entire walk:

Dashwood the white-nosed dachshund
Had a very frozen nose
And if you ever saw him
You would even say it froze.
All of the other dachshunds
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Dashwood
Join in any dachshund games....

We took breaks inside to warm up and watch the Survivor Finale that Keith recorded last night when we were at our church's Christmas concert Sunday evening. E and I also watched The Bells of St. Mary's with Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. Great film!

Our furnace broke last night, so Keith got up at 2 AM to build a fire in the wood stove, and then I kept it going all night. With temps down in the low 20's, we needed to keep the house warm! Tomorrow we need to call the propane company because apparently the problem lies with the new tank they just provided for us. Argh! And brrrrr!

But today in the snow, with kids racing around, singing and having fun, with J yelling "This is the best vacation ever!," showed me that this is what Holydays are all about: the wonder of nature, the joy of children, the beauty of God's world!

So our first snowfall is all that we wanted. And even more.