SNOW -- and Guitar Hero

We got snow yesterday. Everyone who knows me knows I am not a huge fan of the stuff. I don't like being cold and wet. In my defense, I went to highschool in the middle of New York state, where they get LOTS of snow. LOTS and LOTS of snow. And I lived within "walking distance" of the school. This means I have many memories of hiking through horrible snowstorms, coming home with a red drippy nose, ears that hurt SO badly, despite having a hat on, and numb toes and fingers. And one winter my Dad was stationed in Oman during the first Iraq war, so it was up to my mom and my sister and I to shovel our VERY LONG driveway. It used to snow so much that we would finally finish shovelling the driveway and we would turn around and have to shovel our way back. It was literally an all day battle. And then the snow plow would come down the street and dump all the dirty snow from the street into the end of our driveway and block us in anyway.

I also went to junior high in the Washington DC area, which is also prone to lots of snow. Once we got to school only to have them cancel it at 10:00 am because it was just dumping buckets of snow outside. We were supposed to wait in our third period class for our bus number to be called (we were about a 25 minute bus ride from the school). I was in PE. My bus number was called around 5:00 pm. Then it was a very treacherous ride home. The roads were awful and traffic was horrendous. This was the pre-cell phone era, so I remember us all lined up in the hall of the school waiting to use the pay phone. We would call collect and when the recorded message would ask for our name we would say as fast as we could, "PAIGE -- SAY YES!!!" so our parents would hopefully accept the charges. We also delivered the Washington Post during my junior high years and we would have so many layers on and these beautiful shiny silver moon boots to try to keep out the cold and wet. I think I posted a picture of us all decked out in our paper gear once upon a time. Oh, the memories.

Then I went to college in Utah. Enough said.

I do have happy memories of snow. Like the suicide sled hill we had in our backyard in Virginia. It was really long and steep and it wound in and out of trees and rocks. And if you didnt' stop in time you ended up in the creek. And... wait. I think that is my only happy snow memory. The rest involve waiting at the bus stop for busses that didn't come and then trudging home to thaw my frostbitten toes by the fire.

So... in an effort to not pass this scrooginess on to my kids, I bought them snow pants this year and some better gloves. I still need to get them boots, but yesterday I just put them in two layers of socks with some Saran Wrap in between (waterproofing trick from my youth) and sent them out in our two inches of white stuff. I think they had fun. I love the rosy cheeks. And I still can't believe that they cancel school for this...

And in other news, Jillise has decided to learn to play Guitar Hero. She saw Logan, Maika, and Austin playing it and so we have gotten to hear Slow Ride played in super slow motion for the past few days. I am quite proud of her. She gets discouraged easily, but she has stuck with it and is getting better! I love the looks of determination in these pictures.