Oh right, it snowed.  I’d almost forgotten.  I know we’ve been bad about posting lately, and I’ve been going through the photo albums to see what we haven’t shared yet.  I kept telling Katie we’d posted everything, and she kept telling me I was wrong, so finally I decided to prove to her that she was wrong and of course, did the opposite.  I should have learned by now.

So as I said a few days ago, Seattle’s idyllic climate typically gives us one or two decent snows every winter.  Which is to say, enough snow to provide an adequate excuse not to go to work, and enough snow to make finding your sleds suddenly seem very urgent.  We’ve had a few sleds floating around the garage for the last few years, the result of donations by family or neighbors mostly.  We made good use of them when we got some really good snows right before Laura arrived back in late 2008.

I picked that photo because the ones with Dexter revealed that he was not so much a fan and screamed rather loudly.  My how times change.  But as a central tenant of my philosophy of parenting is that it isn’t about the child, but about the photo-opportunity that the child’s life provides the parent, we suited them up and headed out anyway.  It builds character, right???

Last winter forgot to give us a good day for sledding, but this year made up for it.  We had a 3-4 day period of good sledding, packing, snowball-making snow, and we made the best of it.  This shot I took as we were heading out to try sledding for the very first time, on the first day of the snow (so not much had fallen yet).

The part where we actually went sledding shall have to go imagined, sadly, as it was not an experience that lent itself to one parent sitting idly on the side and using the camera.  There’re several good hills very close to our house, so it isn’t much of a hike to get there.  Of course the problem isn’t getting to the hill, it’s getting back up the hill after going down.  I’m sure my mother will disagree, but i just don’t recall being towed back up the hill on a sled repeatedly as a component of my childhood sledding experiences, and yet somehow found myself suckered into that role.  And our 3.5 year old boys weren’t exactly over-endowed with stamina for heading up the hills themselves, so we ended up hiking back up the hill with boys on our shoulders, sleds dangling behind, wondering how long until we can entice the boys to head home for hot chocolate.

The boys loved it, though, and were screaming with delight the whole way down, and then clamoring to be carried back up so they can ride down again.  Dexter especially loved it if we lost control and biffed it.  For a kid with such a natural proclivity for spontaneous encounters with the ground (i.e. tripping over his feet with every third step), at least he’s learned to relish the crashes and have a good time of it.

Later we headed back out into the back yard for some more low key winter fun.  We found the biggest, brightest-colored cars we could, and went back to play.  We spent a fair bit of time trying to convince Nic that playing in the sandbox was not a particularly good idea, but eventually we won out.

The snow kept coming for the next several days, and for most of the rest of the week we got to work from home (not due to the roads, of course – but Boeing isn’t exactly keen on clearing up their parking lots, so while we could get to work, getting into the building might result in a trip to the ER), and so we got watch Malina having a great time with the boys.  That’s always a little bit bittersweet – it’s great to see our boys so happy and having so much fun – it’s the reason we have au pairs in the first place, afterall – but we can’t help but feel a bit jealous.  Katie was working from our bedroom, so each time the boys headed out to the back yard she could watch them at play, and take a few photos.

Later Malina decided to build an igloo.  You can’t really see the shape from here, but it was large enough for the boys and Malina to crawl inside.  She was ably assisted by Nic and Dexter.  Well, not “ably”, I suppose, but sporadically anyway.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried swinging in the snow before.  But then, when I went out and put the boys in the swings, I kept throwing snowballs at them as they swung past me, so maybe it’s a good thing I skipped that experience in my early days.

Alas it only lasted the week, but it was a good time.  It’ll be a lot more fun in a few years when the boys can put on *some* of their gear by themselves, but even so we weren’t complaining.  On this last Wednesday I had to mow my yard for the first time, which just goes to show how fleeting Winter can be here-a-bouts.  At least we made it to March this time.  Last year I mowed in February…

Hope you’re enjoying your last few weeks of Winter,

-Joel

 

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