Winter Wonderland

On Thursday, we drove up to Philly to celebrate an early Christmas with Pat's parents. At that time, the forecasters were predicting 2 to 4 inches of snow for today. Pat thought we should go out and get a sled and boots for the kids. Being from Maine, I thought that was taking it a little far...after all they have winter jackets and sneakers.

But then, the forecast changed a little. 12-18" of snow! Pat got up early, waited for Jack to get up and then hit the road on a quest for winter gear. He found snowsuits and boots and the cutest penguin hat & mittens for Casey at his first stop. But then he had to go to 6 stores to find a plastic orange sled! Either there was a run on them last night or the stores just weren't prepared for one of the biggest December snow storms in recorded history.

The sled was a hit! Jack, Casey & Pat were outside in driving snow and below freezing temperatures for an hour this morning and an hour this afternoon. When Jack came back inside, he told Pat, "That was a fun time outside!" I can't believe Casey stayed outside for as long as she did. The mittens are tough. She won't put her thumb in the thumb hole so she essentially doesn't have the use of her thumb. That's kind of tough when you're trying to shovel and pull a sled around. It's even tougher when Jack is in the sled. But, amazingly (after a little trial and error) they stayed on her hands the whole time.

We also introduced a new daytime resident into our household. His name is Bob the Elf and he reports directly to Santa about how good (or bad) the kids are being. He is part of the Elf on the Shelf family. It's a great little story to help explain how Santa knows so much. Every morning he shows up in a new place after his visit to Santa to report on the previous day. Jack got to name him and I think "Bob" is a good option considering the names he's given to other things...Hmmm and Hor might have been a little awkward.

We're actually pretty lucky that we got some snow before Christmas, even if it's not at our house. Jack was pretty certain that it had to snow before Santa could come. Now that we've seen some snow, he can go back to worrying about where our chimney is, how Santa will fit down it and making sure there isn't a fire going on Christmas eve.

I have some pictures of our winter wonderland but I can't upload them here, or I don't feel like figuring how I could, so maybe I'll post them next week sometime.