Dreaming of snow days

I'm jealous of everyone's snow pictures. It seems the Northwest, Midwest and East Coast were covered in white fluff this past week. (Of course, by now it's probably turned to brownish, yellow layers of ice.)

It was 70 degrees here in Columbus. I'm glad it wasn't freezing, but I do miss playing in the snow.

I remember being a kid in Indiana and waking up on cold winter days to peak out the window hoping the yard would magically have transformed into a winter wonderland. My sister and I would listen to the radio, fingers crossed, to hear whether school would be closed for the day. My mom would listen, too. Her fingers would be crossed, but I don't think we were hoping for the same announcement.

I remember the absolute joy of hearing classes were canceled. Mom could barely get a bowl of cereal in us before we'd run out in the yard to make forts and plan snowball wars with neighbors.

We'd come inside for a break when we'd lost feeling in our toes and fingers and we were convinced our noses had turned into ice cubes. Mom, sister and I would drink hot chocolate and eat mom's famous jam-filled thumb-print cookies.

After warming up, mom would bundle us up again and take us to the park where we would sled down Snow Mountain, in hindsight it was really more of a steep hill. All the kids would be there. We'd have races, try out different tricks and attempt to run into each other as we headed down the hill at top speed. It was all fun and games until someone got hurt, never seriously, thankfully. And then we'd go home.

That night we kids sadly watched our dads shovel the snow into piles and trucks clear the roads. We drifted off to sleep with our hopes of another snow day melting faster than the icicles hanging from the roof.