And Then There Was Snow... Finally

We have been promising Charlie a real snowfall for two years... and finally... finally... it happened.


Charlie woke up at 6:30am and checked outside, thrilled to see it was all white! He wanted to go out right away but I made him wait until 8am. He stayed out for an hour and a half all by himself. He took a ride on his scooter, his bike, pushed an old Tonka truck through it, dragged train tracks outside and built a teeny little snowman and then crushed it (boys!). He was sooooo happy.



Around noon, when all his clothes had dried from the morning's play, he wanted to go back out again. And yes, after I had already gone out and shoveled the driveway and sidewalk, Charlie was suddenly super interested in shoveling snow! Who knew I could've saved myself the trouble by enforcing child labor!?





The snow was coming down in big, heavy, wet, chunky flakes in the middle of the day. No matter how much we tried to convince him that snow is fun and got him all dressed to go out and try it, Henry was NOT feeling it. Snowfall is apparently traumatic and horrible.

This might be one of my favorite shots. After taking H back inside and getting all of his clothes off, I was shooting into the glass storm door.  Can you see Henry inside with no shirt on while Charlie makes a snow angel in the door's reflection? Sometimes Mom has to get creative to get us all in the same frame! :)

By 4pm the snow had stopped falling so I finally was able to go out and play without a giant plastic bag wrapped around my camera. Henry decided he could make it out this time, too, since he wouldn't be tortured by snow touching his face. It was the perfect time to build our very first, real-live, full-sized snow man!



Henry liked picking up chunks of snow and throwing it at me.



And even though he couldn't figure out how to get his thumb in the hole, he liked wearing his new mittens. I think he was pretty excited that his hands didn't get cold when he picked up snow! Amazing how that works!



And yup. I caught him licking it... and yup, Henry is very often much faster than my shutter speed...



We used to have these wonderful bouncy balls that looked like coal (Santa pranked Charlie with them last year), so I was so excited we could use them for our snowman... but after searching and searching, I realized that I had most likely trashed them with the Great Purge of 2013. We had to resort to another idea for Frosty's eyes and mouth. Don't worry folks, he's an of-age snowman. We checked his ID.



And just because they're gorgeous... (although not exactly cooperative in front of the camera)...