SNOW!!

As everyone in the northwest has noticed, there has been a lot more snow, a lot earlier, than many people can remember. Some people look at snow and think one of two things, either I like snow lets go play and have fun, or I do not like the snow and how am I going to get to work/school. So I thought, why not tell people about fun things they can get their kids or friends to do in these wintery months.

Now I know when I was in high school, middle school, and elementary school, I would wake up in the morning and hope for a snow day as soon as I saw snow on the ground. This rarely happened as our school system would only call a snow day if there was a blizzard outside and it was impossible to get around in. But, those few times we did have a snow day we had a blast.

First of all, the funnest thing I think to do is building a snowman. Everyone knows how to do this and you don't really need anything to do this. All you really need is snow. We used to have a contest on our block about who could make the most creative snowman. We would use all sorts of things we could fing in the house. One year, when me and my brother were younger, we thought we would for sure win this year. So when the snow day came around, we were ready. All the kids on the block would run outside and start building their snowmen. My brother and I built our snowman so big we had to have all the other kids come help us put all the pieces of the snowman together. It was twice the size of me, not to mention I was only 7 years old and farely short. Next, we would run inside and get all of our stuff for the creative part of the snowman. We used chocolate for the eyes (we couldn't find any buttons), a carrot for the nose, and more chocolate for the mouth. Then, we found my mom's favorite scarf, which didn't make her very happy, my dad's old coat, a pair of old snowpants, and old boots. Then came the creative part of our snowman. We decided to build a little snow village. So, we built a couple tiny houses and a school and a few more tiny snowmen. Then it came time to when all the parents would judge the snowmen. When they came to ours they were a little confused about why we built the huge snowman and a tiny town. We simply explained to them that the big snowman was, in our mind, kind of like Godzilla and he was going to come around and stomp down the little town. As we were explaining this, me and my brother walked around the yard and stomped down all the little buildings and people to show how it worked in our minds.

We did not end up winning the contest because it was a contest on best snowman, not what you could build up around the snowman. I do not remember whose snowman actually won, I just remember our snowman and how silly it was that we thought our original old snowman would have actually won.

Another thing I remember from my childhood around Christmas time was building the gingerbread house. This is a tradition that my family and I do every year. I think all families should do this because it was always fun to do. There is a kit you can buy at the grocery store with all of the pieces that you need. It has the walls and roof made out of graham crackers and you put the pieces together with frosting, which was my favorite part. Then you used the frosting to stick on all the candy to the outside of the walls which looked like decorations on a real house. Then on Christmas Eve we would leave it out for Santa to eat and he would always leave half of it for us to eat on Christmas Day.

The third thing I remember from Christmas time is sledding. We would wake up in the morning and get our snow suits on and put our hats, gloves, and boots on and go grab the sleds from the garage. Then we would meet up with all the kids on the block and go down the street to the hill in our neighborhood where we would meet up with all of the other kids on our block. Then we would spend what seemed like the whole day sledding down the hill and then carrying our sleds back up to the top while we avoided getting hit by the kids coming down the hill still. We would eventually get too cold and all go back to our houses to drink hot chocolate and eat lunch.

Also, who could for get the snowball fights? I aways ended up running home crying because one of the kids would throw a hard snowball at me and I was always the youngest one on our block so, of course, I would always get hurt. But, every year I would at least attempt to have fun and would always get a few good hits in before I got hurt. We would build up bunkers all along the block for us to hide behind during the fight. Then, we would make a ton of snowballs and hide them behind the bunkers so we had a fresh supply when we needed them. Then the fight would begin and everyone was on their own. Noone ever ended up winning because it would either get too cold or too late and we all had to go home to get changed and warmed up.

These are just a few things that you could look forward to doing when the snow gets heavier or you can look online and there are multiple other ideas for fun things to do.