Enjoying snow day activities

Every winter I grimace when I hear or read the news telling us ‘it’s going to be the worst winter weather this year’.  And every year I hope for no snow.  Snow days are all very well when you don’t have to go anywhere, but when you live in rural areas, my heart sinks.  And yes, we in the UK don’t have snow like elsewhere in the world. But we aren’t used to dealing with it, so we like to moan.  Mostly the snow doesn’t come.

For the first December in as long as I can remember, we had snow. And not just a sprinkling. It was enough to cause schools to close, and for us to hunker inside the house. Well, we did have to have some outdoor snow fun, inbetween trying to get work done.  Of course the farm work continues so nothing changed for them apart from making it harder to do the work.

We woke to beautiful snow on Sunday.  About a foot of it, and over welly depth in places.  And the snow kept falling through the day and into the night.

N has seen snow before but the last decent amount was when he was nearly 3.  It seems his love of a broom and shovel has continued since that time because he spent a lot of the afternoons trying to clear some of the drive.

He was out of the house at 8.30 wanting to get outside. Thankfully he’s happy enough pottering around on his own out there, and could entertain himself until I had had my breakfast and was ready to go outside as well.

As a child N has decent waterproofs, and numerous hats and gloves to use. Unlike me, who has a lot of great coats (none of which fit), apart from my new one.  That was great, although adding a scarf made it me even bulkier – I was like Compo from Last of the Summer Wine with another matching scarf wrapped round my stomach ensuring my coat didn’t pop open! Serious diet needed.  I found a hat, but my all my lovely pairs of suede gloves seem to have disappeared, and my snowman building didn’t help my too small leather gloves, one of which is now split.  I must get some more gloves.  Why is it I always spot them in the summer in random places in the house, but when I need them in winter, they’ve got AWOL.

But N and the snow were calling.

Of course when there’s snow, building a snowman is essential.  N was very good at ordering me to do specific things. Our first attempt (under N’s orders) wasn’t that great – piling snow into a mound isn’t the most efficient way of building a snowman.  The snow was great for making snowballs as it compacted really easily, but trying to add facial features to it on a snowman proved very hard.

Our second attempt was much better.  We did the traditional method, making and rolling snowballs up.  1 carrot later and our snowman was complete.

A few snow angels later and N was determined to try sledging. He had to go down to the yard to find the sledges. I didn’t realise we had so many. I think someone handed some down to him. Then the OH found his and his sister’s from their childhood. Who knew plastic sledges would last that long?

We headed up to the hill behind us. The sheep stayed well out of the way.  But after trudging up, we couldn’t get the sledges to work.  Even with me trying to push N, the sledge wouldn’t budge.  He just sank into the snow.

So it was another walk down the hill again until my brother walked up to us to take N out sledging on a better hill.

N loved the snow.  I didn’t stay out, but N was happy outside for most of the day.  I think he spent about 6-7 hours outside the first day.  All day it snowed, but he wasn’t coming in apart from for meals.

School ended up closed on the Monday so N spent much of that day out in the snow again.  There was more sledging with his cousin – they took the quad bike up on one of the hills, and got to go down 2 tracks on the sledges that the older cousin created for them.

Once he was back on his own, N decided he was going to clear the drive. Give a boy a spade and broom and he’ll be happy for hours. Not much of the drive got cleared (unsurprisingly), but my car had a bit more space around it.

N wasn’t going to give up on his sledging attempts.  We have some leftover gravel piled up and that turned into N’s impromptu sledging run. He spent about an hour smoothing out the slide.  It didn’t matter that it was only about 1.5 metres, it was a successful ramp and he loved it.  Sitting in the sledge and surfing style.

One of the best things about snow is watching children enjoy themselves in it. I’m not a snow fan, but I could watch N playing in it all day.

I’m hoping that’s the only snow we get this winter, but I expect N is hoping for a snow day or two more.

Did you get snow this week?