Growing Snow

Friday afternoon our boys were dancing around the thrift store parking lot in the first brief snow flurry of the season. Saturday night they peeked out the church door and shouted back to the entire Cowichan Folk Music Guild that it was snowing - so much for their participation in the rest of the annual potluck and carol sing-along. Our walk home in the soft glow of falling snow was so magical that we extended it to a walk around our back fields and forest trails.

This morning they miraculously kept to their promise of staying in bed until 7, but then we were outside to build the first snowman and walk the property to find deer and other animal tracks. Quick waffle breakfast then walked back down to try to attend our first service at this reportedly progressive Anglican church, but found ourselves alone so we walked along the enchanted river then back for 2 hours of non-stop sledding down our steep driveway (and over the banks of the sides) with the 3 neighbour kids.

Lunch, nap, more sledding, and Christmas tree decorations (listening to Mahalia Jackson, of course) completed the idyllic weekend that also included a long lounging Texas breakfast with dear friends, overlooking the snowcapped Tzouhalem Mountain from our kitchen table. My favourite day of the year in Vancouver was the first morning of snow on the North Shore mountains, which always was somehow a beautiful sunny day, and that tradition continues strong here in our new home.

Is there anything our boys could want more than snow, a complete weekend with us and friends, a night of music and extensive dessert potluck, and Christmas decorating? They glowed, danced, giggled, shone in all their 5 and 7-year-old glory, as kids should. Ah that every weekend could be so pure as this new snow.