Their First Snow Day!

I was going to do a post about some of our favourite books for 8 year olds today, but, along with a lot of the country, we have had a snow day and our local weather has been so exhilarating that it's basically filled all my time.

Tuesday 7am - not enough to close school darnit

My young boys have yearned for their own snow day since they started nursery. We had snow on Tuesday and it was pretty impressive to look at, but not quite enough. Today though, they got one. Double bubble because they have another snow day tomorrow, although they don't know that yet.

Tuesday 27th 9.30am. Before the wind arrived.

They've watched TV shows and movies where people had a 'Snow Day', wide-eyed and jealous, but it's the tale of the 'Extra Week Off' that really caught their imagination. Back in January 2010 our older kids had an entire extra week tagged onto their Christmas holidays due to snow. It's the stuff of legend.

Managed to fit in a very happy little Snow Angel after school Tuesday.

Where we live, like the rest of England, we don't generally get a lot of snow and the last couple of years we've had none. When it arrives though, our Manchester cloud cover keeps us out of the sun and the temperatures tend to stick. In January 2010 it was minus 18 and I was 7 months pregnant and didn't dare leave the house for 25 days.

We thought this would be the last snow we saw this year.

Our entire street was a giant snow-ice rink that looked like it'd never melt. The 2 inch thick pack ice was beautiful to look at and impossible to stay upright on. Our drive was out of action for several days and the whole country almost ran out of grit, even we bought a bag. Our mini Tesco ran out of anything good. I kept sending children out to look and there was jubilation when, after 4 days of scant supplies, they returned triumphant with carrots. Milk was a bit of a lottery, but luckily back then I often made bread, so we were saved the struggle of having to feed 8 on a Danish Loaf and 2 day old croissants.

Haha no! The snow was back and pretty darn bracing by home time Wednesday.

It isn't that bad here this year, it isn't minus 18 for starters, but it's tried. A new and exciting addition to snow for 2018 is the wind. This has given us a wind chill of minus umpteen and removed the entire outer layer of everyone's face. It's also frozen my washing machine drainage pipe, so I've spent the last couple of hours bailing out my laundry, which is basically outdoors, so the water is freezing as soon as it touches the ground. Home Alone missed that trick...

Midnight, in Manchester - really - Wednesday night. That's not the sun, it's a streetlight

My snowman is awful because the snow is too frozen and granulated to stick together. You can't snowball because you can't make a ball. You can't 'go for a walk' because you can't keep your eyelids open for more than 3 minutes without it sandblasting your eyeballs, and forget driving. Driving should probably be banned in these conditions (there was a 16 vehicle pile up near me today and it is a miracle everyone walked away from their crushed cars).

The text of dreams.

Weather ruins your plans whoever you are, you have to step down and admit that you were defeated. Everyone can go out and play with it for free, we can all watch the snow fall and gasp at our world in white. We can all laugh at the people ringing the local council and shouting about gritters, and moan that we hurt because we slipped.

They made the most of their day!

I still love it though, and actually, I don't mind if it wants to stay a little longer. It's nature, showing us what she can do. Giving us a kick and reminding us that she is there, and proving that we are, none of us, bigger than the weather.

Obviously I only wrote this post to collect some of my favourite photos from the last couple of days, but I'll gladly accept sympathy for my ice rink laundry cupboard... If you have to go out in this weather, take food and drink, layer up and don't take risks. The same works even if you are lucky enough to be able to stay home.