A snowy day

Remember when snow days were fun? Like when they didn't mean that your kids were going to be out of school for days upon days upon days?

Yeah. Me neither.

But seriously, we had an epic snowfall last month. It started snowing in the wee hours of a Friday morning, and it snowed and snowed and snowed. We got about nine inches, all told, which is very unusual for Nashville.

It was beautiful. In fact, I felt almost giddy. Sometimes, we'll get a couple of inches of snow, just enough that it makes things pretty for a few hours. And then it starts to get all messed up. And I feel sort of miserly about it, like "Don't walk in my front yard because you'll use up all the snow and it'll never look pretty again!" With this snowfall, it just kept snowing. We tramped around in our yard, and a couple of hours later, you couldn't even tell.

And the sledding was fabulous. We took the boys to two different areas of the neighborhood for different sledding experiences. First they hit the hill behind a neighbor's house. A short steep hill that gives a quick fast ride, but not a scary one. You rarely see the big kids or adults sliding here, but it's still fun.

Then we braved the long fast slide of a hilly neighboring street. A family photo afterward.

Andrew was a hard sell at first for the street sledding. The sledders were working up some fairly impressive speed, and he wasn't so sure he was ready to take a chance on it, despite having taken a similar ride last winter during Icepocalypse 2015. He was enjoying giving scores to all the other sledders (and he was a tough judge). We coaxed and cajoled and finally convinced him to try it. (Was there a bribe involved? I couldn't say.) At the end of his big ride, he scored himself 100 out of 100. Yep.

The best part of this particular snow was that it lasted for a couple of days, in all its glory, and then it got washed away by rain. And the boys only missed a couple of days of school altogether. (Later, they missed three days for a piddling couple of inches that disappeared very quickly, which is far more typical here.)

I think most of us were so pleased by our big January snowfall that we're about ready to bid farewell to winter and welcome spring. But, it's still just mid-February, and chances are, we'll have at least one more bout of crazy winter weather.