That said, I found my 9 year old daughter… at 8:00 this morning… sitting on the couch dressed in her winter coat, hat, thin gloves, and tennis shoes… proclaiming that she was ready to go play in the snow!
Oh yeah… I really did make that promise that we were going to play outside today right after breakfast, didn’t I?
And since a promise is a promise, I told her to get out of her coat, hat, etc, and that we would have breakfast… Then, I proceeded to explore the great mystery of the basement looking for appropriate winter attire for such a snow… To my delight (or maybe dismay… just really depends on how you look at it), I did, indeed, find everything we would need to enjoy our wintery morning… Our plan was to build seven snowmen today. I questioned whether I had either the energy or the carrots for such a feat…
Now comes the part I dislike…
Once I dragged enough gear up to outfit a pretty good chunk of the United States Army… in Siberia… The real fun began…
Grace and Caleb were ready first, so I threw them out in the snow…
Ian was ready next, so I threw him out, too… with a word to his big sister to keep an eye on him…
Seth had a great deal of difficulty finding gloves, but he was also… finally… vanquished to the snow…
And then I had to dress Miah. Miah did not… in any way… enjoy this process. Since I am pretty much obsessed with little baby hats and hair bows, I thought the hat wouldn’t be a problem (she is used to them, after all)… not today. And I thought she was just going to absolutely lose it when I tried to stuff her hands inside the glove like things that are attached to her snowsuit. On this point, I conceded, and just got our her little owl gloves (that, of course, match her hat), which were a slightly easier sell, as long as I kept tweeting like a bird the entire time I was putting them on. It occurred to me later that owls don’t really “tweet”… rather, they “who”… Oh well… I guess I’ll have to re-teach that one when we do animal sounds…
Somewhere during the “dress Miah like an Eskimo” adventure, Grace started screaming at the door that the snow wasn’t “packing snow”… How this was my fault, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t put my order in early enough for packing snow to have it delivered by today. I told her… through clenched teeth… that she had whined for two days to go outside… now she was there… and she’d better have fun or we were never going outside again!
I ran Miah outside and sat her down in the snow, immediately, hoping to snap a couple of good pictures before she started howling. To my surprise, she started looking around in amazement and smiling… I think she likes snow…
It was just about at this point that I was summoned by Grace to look at her snow angel (at least she found something fun to do, after all), by Seth to look at his snow volcano, and by Ian who was under the trampoline… freaking out because his hats (both of them) had been knocked off his head by Caleb. It was very difficult to take care of all of these requests simultaneously, but I think everyone was satisfied… eventually… until someone walked on the snow angel that Ian had created (and none of us knew was there) at which point the distress began all over again…
At which point, Seth was too cold to stay outside anymore…
And Miah’s face was turning pink…
So I sent Seth in with specific directions as to where he should put all of his snow covered things (which he followed… go figure…)
And I brought Miah in and proceeded to pull all of the snowy clothing items off of her, as well.
Many, many requests for hot chocolate were interjected in this process…
Just as I got ready to make the hot chocolate; Grace was at the door freezing to death in the way that only my little drama princess can, so I looked at her and called Ian inside. This sounds cruel but makes sense if you understand that Ian cannot be left outside without an adult or at the very least Seth or Grace!
After that, I called Caleb inside… who was quite distraught that our outdoor time was over (I think he must be our Boy Scout)…
And finally Grace came in…
And now everyone was begging for hot chocolate, so I made it very clear that they needed to play in the living room long enough for me to warm some water up, and I made it… finally… and let me tell you, I needed it, too, because I experienced this whole adventure in two pairs of sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and tennis shoes!
It seriously took us over an hour to get outside!
I think we played for 20 minutes… maybe!
And they want to do this again?
Well… let’s at least hope for some good packing snow and maybe a napping baby?
Lisa
1 comment:
Loved hearing about this! Those are precious pictures.
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