White Christmas

For the first time in my life I got to experience a White Christmas :)

We were in Alabama visiting my family, and it started with snow flurries early Christmas morning. It didn't stick very well, but there were a few times that it snowed huge snowflakes and lots of them. And it stuck enough that Tyler was able to make snowballs to throw at everyone ;)

Madison and Lauren enjoyed it for a few minutes until they decided that snow was too wet and cold - that's my girls - lol. I smile now just thinking about our white Christmas, but this girl (and evidentially my own girls) prefer warm weather. Having said that, growing up in Alabama, I always wanted it to snow on Christmas, and it never did. There were years that the temperature was in the teens or lower, but it never snowed ON Christmas. Then we had the blizzard of 1993 which produced snow drifts up to my waist!!! But that was in March!

Last year we took the kids to "Snow Mountain" in Georgia so they could see snow - but it was the fake stuff; and it actually hurt as the ice was spit out of the machine. The kids were like "Wow, snow!!! Then - OWWW this hurts - lol. So I was VERY glad that they got to see real snow :) It makes me even happier seeing my kids enjoy it than seeing snow as a kid. I still wish they could wake up one morning, and look out the window with anticipation to see if it had snowed and see a white blanket covering everything. I loved waking up as a kid and seeing fresh snow on the ground, before anyone walked on it. Especially as we rounded the corner from our driveway to my grandparents yard which would be so smooth, perfect white, with their house in the background - wonderful memories. Then my mom would dress us up in layers of warm clothes, often with boots on that were way too big, several layers of socks, lots of warm clothes. It probably took her longer to get us ready than it did for us to play in the snow. Then my dad would pull us in a makeshift sled. There is one picture of me pulling my sisters in a makeshift sled. We would make snow icecream (don't know that I would do that today, but 30 years ago it was safe, and GOOD!! My aunt was telling my kids about that when we were in Alabama and they were amazed. Matt lived in Chicago as a kid for several years, and he had never heard of that before either.

Anyway, the kids had fun. They caught snowflakes in their mouths, Tyler hit everyone with snowballs, and the girls enjoyed watching it snow from the warm breakfast room :)

And... the best part of all for me was that for the first time ever, we got to have Matt's mom with us AND see my family too. Normally we have to pick one or the other because of the distance between them. But Matt's mom came with us this time. The only sad thing was that because of the ice on the roads we were not able to see my mom or one of my sisters. I really missed seeing them :( I didn't want them to risk being on the roads, but I do wish I could have seen them.

On a side note - my granddad got to come home from the hospital for 2 days, and now he is BACK in the hospital :(