Snow day!

I LOVE SNOW DAYS. Especially unexpected ones. This morning, I woke up to 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground and no work. In Tennessee, the whole city shuts down when it snows. There are no snow plows (that I have seen) and no salt trucks. Your best bet is to call up a buddy with a 4x4 and hope that you make it safely to the grocery store, and if not, you better hope you can live off of whatever is in your house until the snow melts.

Having lived in Colorado for 8 years, 3 inches of snow is nothing. I remember many many days waking up and seeing 3+ inches of fresh snow outside and immediately running downstairs to the TV to watch for a cancellation, only to find out that school wasn't even delayed. Not even by half an hour. So I would sit there and wait until last minute, hoping that the superintendant had a change of heart and decided not to risk the lives of hundreds of children that day. He usually decided it was worth the risk. I would then trudge sadly upstairs to get ready for the grueling wait in the 20 degree weather for the bus.

In Colorado, they didn't mess around with the snow. The minute the first flake fell, the snow plows and salt trucks were outside doing their thing. I hated them as a kid. They meant a morning full of algebra and science classes instead of cartoons and hot chocolate. As I began my walk to the bus stop, hands shoved into gloves deep into my pockets and close to my body to avoid letting any freezing wind in, I would inevitably see that one kid whose mom drove him to the bus stop in his warm, cozy van and let him wait inside until the bus came. I always wondered why Van Mom wouldn't let the rest of us in to keep warm. Couldn't she see that we were all losing precious extremities with each passing minute?

We would all stand in a little group, waiting for the 15-minute mark - as we all know, that's the correct amount of time that is allowed to pass before you go home and tell your parents that school must be cancelled because the bus didn't show up. Inevitably though, we would get close to the 15-minute mark and then see it- the white strobe light. When there was heavy snowfall in Colorado, the busses would turn on a white strobe light on their roof and chug along in the snow to pick up the unwilling children. The white strobe light in the distance meant no cartoons or snowball fights...unless it snowed harder by lunch hour.

I haven't had a snow day since...well, since last week, but BEFORE THAT I can't remember when I had a snow day. As an adult, you'd think that the excitement of a snow day would have died a little bit, but this morning, that child in me that used to run to the TV to see if school was cancelled got really excited when I found out that I didn't have to go in to work. What to do? Netflix instant que? Baking? Computer games? Reading? Playing in the snow is not really that appealing to me...I'm not too fond of wet, freezing feet and hands, but since Haley has never been in snow before, I promised my husband that I'd take her out in it. She spent most of her time trying to eat the snow. 11-month olds don't really get the fun factor of snow yet. Give her a few years and she'll be having snowball fights and getting excited when a new blanket of snow means no school that day.