Snow Day

Darren and I had been planning for weeks to hold a yard sale this past Saturday, amassing piles of stuff in the center of our garage as we purged every room, closet, cabinet, and drawer in this house. Imagine our dismay when we realized that snow was in the forecast for Friday night and Saturday morning! Snow! Finally, but on the one weekend that we were really hoping for perfect weather! As we readied for bed late Friday night, large, beautiful, fluffy flakes were falling gently and accumulating rather substantially in our dark yard. We were rather undecided at this point as to whether to go ahead with the sale; on the one hand, it was snowing. Who would really want to be out yard saling on a snowy Saturday morning? On the other hand, we had already designated that day because it was one of my rare weekends off from work, and we had already paid for the advertisement in the newspaper. We finally decided at five in the morning to go ahead and set up as planned, as the snow had stopped and much was already melting. Neither of us expected a very good turnout, but felt obligated to carry on, anyway. We were so surprised to find that this was actually one of the most successful sales we've ever held! We couldn't believe it. We kept looking at each other as people kept coming (and buying!) and were so glad we hadn't canceled our plans.

At one point, however, as we stood shivering in the driveway, we suddenly heard the sound of our kids (who had been up to that point snuggled into blankets on the living room floor, watching Saturday morning cartoons), laughing and shouting in the backyard! I ran (or actually, more like waddled at a brisk pace) through the house and out the back door to find all three kids, barefoot, in pajamas, running through the snow! They were so excited, and had been so very patient, that I abandoned Darren for a while and bundled them all up in layers of clothes, mittens, coats, and hats. (And as I did so, I wondered why on earth I've been envying all those other mothers in snowy parts of the country who have to do this every day.)

By the time we finally made it back outside, there really wasn't much snow left to play in but they still had a blast anyway. They threw snowballs, tasted snow, collected buckets of melted runoff from the roof, slid down snowy slides, climbed on snowy forts, and completely soaked themselves through to the skin! They must have been cold, because nobody--not even Meghan!--objected when I said it was time to go inside for warm baths.

I'm just so pleased with how wonderful our Saturday turned out. I had thought that snow and our yard sale would be mutually exclusive; little did I know how exciting each would actually be! I'm so glad that my kids had the opportunity to experience the joy of what little snow we did have, and was incredibly happy with the final profits made from our sale. It was enough, in fact, to indulge the crazy whim I had to make-over two rooms in our house...but that story is another post entirely. :)