It appears to be one of those years wherein I do not meet my goal of having all of my Christmas shopping done before December. That ship sailed some time ago.
This coincides with an apparent lack of snow in the festive season. This is problematic chiefly because then we will have to get creative in terms of winter activities to keep the children entertained and out of our hair. A brief caveat before I proceed: like meteorologists, I am terrible at predicting what will happen with the weather in a week. By the time you read this, there may be an extraordinary dump of snow blanketing the city making this column irrelevant. Regardless, the lack of snow has severely hampered my enthusiasm for the season.
Normally, in a snow-ladened evening, our family bundles up in our snow gear and we trudge outside to clear the driveway. Everyone has their own shovels and we pitch in to get the driveway cleared as fast as we can. Once we have the driveway cleared of snow and a thick sheet of ice remains, then we push the kids down the driveway on sleds and watch them try to get back up without falling. Then we laugh because they can't. Instead of shovelling, we can enjoy our work-free evening and spend quality time together playing board games and listening to the kids fight about what the rules are to Monopoly and not believing us when we tell them the actual rules.
On snowy afternoons during the Christmas break, you can often find us playing in the snow, building snowmen, or perhaps, a little ice fishing on an incredibly windy afternoon. Rather than play in the snow (since there is very little), we could stay inside and argue about what family movie to watch. When the kids lose - because how often can we really watch Teen Titans? - we can sit back with a beverage in our hands enjoying the sight of them pitching a fit because we are making them watch "classic" movies with real people acting that we know they will enjoy, like Home Alone and Jumanji. After they watch (and love) said movies, we will enjoy their ability to forget that they ever had a hissy fit and insist that they have always loved the movie.
On normal snowy mornings, we leisurely wake up after the children have fed and dressed themselves. We smile contentedly at each other enjoying our coffees that may or may not have Baileys in them. Our children play quietly and we start the day off happy and feeling blessed. But maybe these relaxed mornings are merely a hallucination brought on by sleepless nights and this (aside from the Baileys) does not happen, on any festive morning, snow or not.
Luckily, we come from hardy northern stock and will survive, snow or no snow, and stay relatively intact.
Merry Christmas and best of luck playing in the snow.
